Ok, I have made it through a little over half of the pages and one thing that keeps popping up to me is that they might be reusing parts from previous years. If they want to do that and stick to the locomotion hints of making it harder to move around, then the inaugural challenge of FIRST (Maize Craze) comes to mind. For those who don't know the first year's challenge, go to this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maize_craze.
The basic summary of this challenge was picking up TENNIS BALLS and scoring them in either the corner or into a central column that was in the center of the field if i understand it correctly. Also, the field was not carpeted, it was covered in 1-2 inches of corn (thus the MAIZE spelling).
I highly doubt that they would do this challenge exactly but if they are really wanting to do a throwback to a historical game, what better than the first year's challenge of moving on corn? And now with that, my mind is spinning with ideas of making robots navigate through a child's ball pin.
Any ideas off of this or am i just repeating something posted in the second half of this thread?
also, a link to the only video I could find of that first year:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-m1QBOxsfg