This year's game: Aerial Assist

On January 4th, across the country and around the world, FIRST Robotics Teams tuned in or went to Kickoff Events with other teams to watch the announcement of this year's game challenge: Aerial Assist.

The game in played on a 25 by 54 foot arena on carpet, much the same as past years games. The goal of the game is to score points by throwing an exercise-type ball into goals, either above each alliance station or in both corners at the bottem of the alliacnce station with a center truss reaching 6 feet 2 inches at its highest.

Each robot and it's drive team participates in a three-robot alliance against another three-robot alliance to outscore each other. The winning alliance receives credit for their match. Each matchs' alliances are chosen at random through the qualifying rounds, with the final round alliances being chosen by the top 8 ranking teams.

Points are awarded based upon the value of the goal the ball is scored in, how many assists were used in getting the ball to the goal, and whether or not it was thrown over the center truss.

The matches are 2 minutes 30 seconds long. The autonomous period is 10 seconds long in which each ball scored earns an extra 5 points. Another extra 5 points can be scored by moving into your alliance specific zone. The remaining 2 minutes and 20 seconds is the tele-op period, in which both alliances attempt to pass the remaining ball between themselves to score. Each successful pass adds an assist to the ball which in the end adds up to a lot of points. More points are added if a pass was made over the center truss.

An official one-page description of the game is available here.

You can read the official Aerial Assist rules here.