Curling + Robots = Sweeet

[Josh Hambright]

So i was discussing this idea with Brandon today,
Basicly i've come up with a really sweet game design, that I think would be really unique and an amazing ability for people to show off their skills.

The basic concept is to incorperate the Canadian pastime of Curling into a robotics challenge. Now over the years we have heard much discussion of people wanting an underwater challenge, this game could be very similar to that but instead of under water, its on top of frozen water! Otherwise known as ice.

Now if your not familar with curling, its a sport that involves the sliding of a heavy rock down a length of ice towards a target. Whoever gets their stone closest to the target wins, i could be butchering this explanation but thats what i understand it to be.
Now there are people who slide the rock but also people called 'sweepers' who sweep the ice infront of the rock in order to control its speed and direction by reducing the friction of the ice by melting the top layer into water for the rock to slide on.
Its very similar to the game of shuffle board.

Basicly you would have some robots who choose to play sweeper and some who choose to roll the rock, so there are chances for teams who can just push stuff and teams that can build arms! So everyone can enjoy the robot fun!

now one problem that might arise would be the issue of finding arenas that could handle this, but if we can put a man on the moon, we can make robots dance on ice! Heck i even saw alvin and the chipmunks on ice once when i was little!

So yah, think about it, i know the canadian teams will be all about this game. But curling and robots is the future of FIRST, mark my words!


Josh

PS> I am just trying to lighten everyones day and share this funny idea i had, brandon thought it was funny. maybe other people will to. i'm not making fun of curling either, its a crazy unique sport!

[Collmandoman]

omg curling is awesome
omg robots are awesome
the two together
cause hemoraging

[Jeff Rodriguez]

The only problem is that the track, or whatever you call the ice, is 146ft long and 15' 7" wide. You would have to have 2 or 3 of them for a competition, and that makes it hard to find a good venue.

Rules of Curling:
http://www.worldcurling.org/Curlhome...ompetition.pdf

[Josh Hambright]

Jeff you raise a good point, but if you look at this years game, its basicly tic tac toe. And as a child i never played tick tac toe on a scale like we are playing it, so surely FIRST understands how to scale things up and down and should be able to get around the issues of the long playing field.

Edit:
This is also a great game for 3 on 3. Because you have 1 slider and 2 sweepers! you could even have simultanious curling on 2 sides of the field at once, trying to position their rocks or stones or whatever they are called in a better place the the oppositions, and trying to bump the other persons out of good position!

[Jaine Perotti]

How about an adaptation to the game, if it can't be reproduced exactly?

I just had an idea for this... although the idea is only half formed and many details are left out... please add on to it!!

- The playing field would be a typical FIRST playing field...standard size, carpet, everything.
- The playing/scoring objects would be something that could roll along the floor - maybe a similar design to the goals that have been used in past games, but alot smaller, and lots of them.
- These goals would have to start in some kind of a neutral position, don't know where/how yet.
- There would be a scoring zone of some sort on either end of the field for each alliance.

I am not sure how to describe this next field feature, but they are designed to be manipulated in a way similar to the way "sweepers" try to manipulate the surface of the ice to control direction. This would work almost in a way similar to a pinball machine - the goals would bounce off of "roadblocks" manipulated by "sweeper" robots.

- Basically, these "roadblocks" would be a flat panel, maybe about 2 feet long and 1 foot high, mounted to an axle that is fixed to the floor so that it can spin on a centered axis.
- These roadblocks would be positioned between the original neutral starting position of the goals and the scoring zones, and would be spaced fairly close together.
- The roadblocks could be spun around by robots to alter the course of a rolling goal, and could be used to try to block goals from being pushed into an opponents scoring zone.
- Just the action of a robot trying to move through the maze of roadblocks would create havoc because the roadblocks would spin to the sides as the robot pushed through.. therefore making goal bouncing a more difficult task.
- robots would not be allowed to lift the goals over the roadblocks...they must spin the roadblocks to the side, or bounce them off the roadblocks, to be able to move them around the field.
- The roadblocks would have to be fairly difficult to spin, as the bouncing of goals should not be able to move them very easily.

Does this make any sense? It probably should wait until the "Design the 2006 Game" thread comes around, but since this idea came directly from the posts above... I figured I might as well share it!

Ask me if this made absolutely no sense, and I will try to explain better and maybe throw in some paint sketches.

-- Jaine

[Chris Hibner]

First of all: Curling = Sweeeet

No, seriously - if you have never been curling, you should really do it. I was in a curling league for a short time and it was a blast.

Anyway, this may be a great game idea. It might need a little development, but it might work. We really don't even need ice: put some ball bearings in a block and you'll have something that will slide along a hard surface.

[Vince lau]

Before FIRST came to Canada, we had a National competition called Canada FIRST and one of the challanges one year was curling, it was played on some tiles that simulated ice. We also had hockey as a game one year, i think it was played on HDPE

[Ian Curtis]

Awesome!! Curling robots would be interesting for an actual first match. As for burningquestion your game sounds like fun but it also sounds like it would be too hard to navigate through for the drivers. Of course it would be fun for FIRST to give us touch sensors and have a completely autonomous match.

[JoeXIII'007]

Holy cow! I NEVER thought that curling would ever show up on a forum like this. Tying it to robotics makes it even more insane. I'd really like to see this, it would be great.

[Cyberguy34000]

Wouldn't be a problem in an arena like at the Denver Regional. It's noramlly an ice rink, but for the comp they layed down something on top of it. It would definently be an interesting game. Though there's a bit of a problem in "damaging" the ice field. Think about what it would look like in finals. Of course, I'm not really thinking about the Zambonies... I think you have something here.

[BaldwinNYRookie]

Robot Curling sounds rockin'. Although Hockey would most likely work better.

[tkwetzel]

Originally Posted by Chris Hibner

First of all: Curling = Sweeeet

No, seriously - if you have never been curling, you should really do it. I was in a curling league for a short time and it was a blast.

Anyway, this may be a great game idea. It might need a little development, but it might work. We really don't even need ice: put some ball bearings in a block and you'll have something that will slide along a hard surface.

First of all: Curling is "friggin' sweet".

Next...you can't really use a block on ball bearings or you negate the purpose of the sweepers.

Wait...new thought came to me while typing the above sentence: You could have sand or something for the sweepers to sweep in front of or out of the way of the block to allow changes in speed. Hmm...

[sirbleedsalot]

I know we are all brainstorming here, but sand would not be good. It would get in motors in the air lines but more importantly all over the venue. Also FIRST would not use these game ideas, as some of us would have a leg up on the other teams, but that does not mean that they could not use portions of the ideas. Also we could color the curling deals so that the CMU cam could come back. I think it would be awesome if FIRST told us that it was coming back so teams could have more time to learn how to use them.

[dlavery]

Dagnabbit, some one has been peeking through my design notebook again! I had just figured out how to squeeze the length of a curling track into a standard FIRST field length, by combining it with banked curves from a NASCAR track. But since you figured it all out, I have to throw away the whole idea and start all over again.



-dave

[tkwetzel]

Dave...if the curling stones are traveling too fast on the field that you posted a picture of, they will fly over the player station wall and be very harmful...oh yeah robots could do that too...safety FIRST Dave. (Maybe they'll add a roof to the drivers station next year?)