2009 Competition Kickoff

How long had we waited for this day?!

After the exciting events of Team 1540’s BunnyBot Scrimmage and Team 2550’s All Night Kickoff Party, over 500 FRC members from all over Oregon and Southern Washington filled the Oregon City High School’s gymnasium bleachers. Not only had all of these students, mentors, and parents driven great distances to attend this Kickoff event, but also all were eager and awake at 7:00 AM on the last Saturday morning of their Winter Break! It was incredible how many students “survived” the all-nighter and were alert during the live webcast.

As the final viewers rushed in the gym to fill the bleachers, the Kickoff webcast began promptly at 7:00 AM, life from New Hampshire. After many speeches given by our FRC founders and directors, the greatly awaited game animation began to play as the surrounding students cheered.

Dean and Woody revealed this year’s game challenge: Lunacy.
This year, FRC’s game components and rules are entirely different than the last few years. The low friction surface the flooring provides and the required slippery kit wheels prevent many teams from using previous tactics to succeed in this year’s competition.

Lunacy is played with three types of “Orbit Balls”: Moon Rocks, Empty Cells, and Super Cells. These Orbit Balls are to be thrown into the opposing alliance’s trailers, attached to the rear of each robot. Orbit Balls can also be given to human players by the robots, so that the human player can throw and trade Orbit Balls to score points.

Robots slipping and sliding around is not the only big challenge in this game: robots are not allowed to extend outside of their starting dimensions. This means that we cannot design a robot with arms that extend outwards, etc.

The next six weeks will be long and hard, but also exciting for all FRC teams. Everyone left Oregon City High School, destined for a long day of brainstorming. Let’s see what we’ll have in six weeks!