This year’s competition is Breakaway!

On January 9th, 2010, FIRST announced the challenge for the 2010 competition: Breakaway. Breakaway is played on a 27 by 54-foot rectangular field  with two competing alliances consisting of three robots each. The goal of the game is to obtain more points than the opposing alliance by either shooting balls into the goals, climbing on the alliance tower or platform or by lifting the robot off the playing surface. 

The game consists of two periods, the autonomous period where the robot follows preset instructions and the teleoperated period when drivers assume control of the robot. Robot can herd and shoot (but not capture) the 12 balls on the field into their goal to score 1 point. When a ball goes into the goal, a human player must use the trident to place the balls back into the “ball return” which rolls the balls back into play. During the last 20 seconds of the match, robots can attempt to elevate themselves off of the field by hanging from a tower, scoring two points, and any other robot hanging from the previous robot will score an additional 3 points.

For more information about this year’s competition, Breakaway, look at the 2010 FIRST Robotics Competition Manual and Related Documents or watch the competition video below.

Here is the competition video: