I’ve seen a lot of speculation of what FIRST would use as game piece in the near future.
I’d like to hear what type of objects you think that could be coming and how your team would manipulate them.
Take into account the size, weight, material it’s made of, how many you might be able to manipulate, and the appeal of playing with said game piece.
My example is a foam 12 inch dodecahedron weighing about 2 lbs. Maybe being able to manipulate 3 at a time I would aim for a wide intake that would funnel them into an arm shooter.
Well, we have had tetrahedra and “cubes”, so I suppose the other platonic solids are all on the table. However, the dodecahedron and icosahedron are so close to spheres that (especially in foam), they are essentially spheres for purposes of intake and handling; octahedra would be more interesting. So would a solid tetrahedron - no parallel faces to grip, no holes to engage. I’m not looking forward to these, but they seem a challenge more like what the GDC is likely to present if they aren’t going to do spheres and make us do something unexpected with them.
I expect a “heavy” game piece sometime soon. We’ve never had a game piece that was particularly dense. Leaving out robot-lifts-robot, we haven’t had a “game piece” with a mass within an order of magnitude of a typical robot since the mobile goals of 2002, 2004, and 2009 (trailers in the last case).
I think the rope from 2016 would be a very interesting game piece. Whether to be shot or placed, it would make for a very different challenge while also reusing an old FRC game piece, which seems to be a trend. There are tons of different ways to manipulate rope, so each team would come up with an interesting solution.
Roombas.
The game would be called Roomba Roundup. Teams capture Roombas and place them in a corral on their end of the field and can steal Roombas from the other alliances side and put them in their corral.
I want a game with ridiculously large game pieces. Imagine a 40" power cube- how would you begin to handle that?
I’d also like to try heavy game pieces. However, there are some pretty obvious safety concerns- it hurts much less to be hit in the face with a dodgeball than a bowling ball (though 2016 has taught us that the former still hurts a lot).
Is it crazy to think about a piece that requires more than one robot to move it? Not necessarily heavy; maybe it has two “levers” on opposite ends that must be “activated” to move it.
In the times when it worked, I think it would be really fun. That being said, think of all the strife that the Auto Quest RP caused this year, and then consider having that for every time you want to move a game piece.
The Roombas could be comets or asteroids or other space debris with semi-predictable paths that have to be mined to continue your exploration of Deep Space.
I think a football might be used soon. The last “sport” gamepiece that we’ve had was a Frisbee.
It would be difficult enough for teams to pickup and control within their robot, but easy enough to launch with plenty of football shooters already existing. Very similar to how 2013 was, but a lot more easy on anyone unlucky enough to be hit by one (if made of foam).
Footballs have been the conversation for YEARS. The earliest post I could find was an archived one from 2000…
Didn’t FIRST want to take it easy on games that encouraged a large amount of stored mechanical potential energy? I think this was a 2014 concern when someone broke their arm on a ball catapult (that being said 2015 had perhaps more dangerous can-grabbers).
As for my own preferences, tube game, but past that - non symmetric game elements (maybe beanbags with 2017 fuel as filler?), or symmetric objects with centers of mass that are not in the geometric centroid?
Considering international teams’ challenge obtaining game pieces, it makes sense to consider objects that are obtainable at scale (& durable). Footballs yes. Also foam rollers (like used for stretching muscles). Rubber track and field discus. Traffic cones…
Contrary to what I’ve seen others say so far, I think I’d like to see something small and light. Big and heavy is fun, but I would like to see robots play with ping pong balls. Something small and light is more difficult to control, and would pose a challenge because a large chunk of people have a ‘bigger is better’ mindset. I think something small, light, and hard to shoot would pose a fun challenge for builders and drivers, and a unique game style.
