Ten Years of Warlocks Robots

2005

In our inaugural year, the Warlocks built a simple, but effective robot to play the game, Triple Play. During the game PVC pipe pyramids, or tetras, were placed on top of larger pyramid goals for points. Bonuses were awarded for the alliance color being on top of three goals in a row, across, down, or diagonally, like a large tic-tac-toe game. The race to cap each goal with your alliances' color tetra led to some high stacking on the goals.

Bonus points were made during autonomous by dislodging tetras hanging inside goals, or locating special tetras with vision targets.

The Warlocks attended two regionals. Since we had received a NASA grant as a rookie team, we attended the Chesapeake Regional in Annapolis MD which was a NASA sponsored event. We were awarded Highest Rookie Seed honors at this event. We also went to the very first Fingerlakes Regional at RIT and very nearly won it. Only a last-second bump into the center pyramid that dislodged some tetras cost us the win.

We then went to the Championships in Atlanta, where we received honors as Highest Rookie Seed on the Galileo field.

2006

Our sophomore season was less spectacular. Aim High was the name of the game and used Nerf balls about 8" in diameter as playing pieces. A high circular goal at each end of the field was the target as robots shot the balls into it.

During autonomous, robots attempted to shoot balls through the goal assisted by a lighted target over it.

A platform under the goal made it difficult to get close to the goal, but awarded a bonus if the robot was on it at the end of the match.

We attended Fingerlakes and Chesapeake Regionals.

2007

Rack And Roll was the game for this season. The game was based on hanging inflated rings on a central rack in the middle of the field. Points were accumulated by the alliance color being the last one on the peg. Black bonus rings added to the score and completing rows and columns around the rack multiplied the scoring. Naturally, it was a fast and furious race to hang the most rings.

An autonomous period began the matches with robots attempting to sucessfully hang rings unaided by human control.

At the end of the match, if a robot could support their other alliance robot off the ground and keep it there at the buzzer, bonus points were awarded. Supporting two robots was even better and earned a higher award.

The Warlocks attended the Fingerlakes and Buckeye Regionals that year.

2008

Taking a racing motif, FIRST Overdrive had us going around in circles chasing a big ball and tossing it over a rack in the middle of the track. At the beginning of the game, the red and blue balls were placed on the rack and could be knocked off during autonomous for bonus points. Points were also given for completing turns around the "track." The robot could also be helped by a human player with an infrared (IR) remote to issue commands.

Each lap scored points as you carried, pushed or threw the balls along. Extra points were earned by throwing the ball over the rack. With three robots on an alliance, but only two balls of each color, it took some teamwork and cooperation.

The Warlocks attended both the Fingerlakes and Greater Toronto Regionals, bringing home silver medals from Canada.

2009

It was Lunacy to try to drive a robot on a slick surface, but that was the game this year. In order to emulate the one-sixth gravity of the moon, in commemoration of the anniversary of the Lunar Landing, the field had a plastic "regolith" surface and the robots used slick plastic wheels.

The game used balls made of woven straps and the goals they had to be placed into were towed around behind the robots. Human players could throw the balls into them, or a robot could shoot them into their opponents trailer.

Much of the game was avoiding getting pinned and dumped on, but effective handling of the balls and shooting them made a good offense.

Certain colored balls were extra bonus points and came into play at the end of the game, introduced by human players through a "fueling station" at the side of the field. Vision targets on the trailers enabled autonomous scoring at the beginning of the match.

Our team travelled to both the Fingerlakes and Buckeye Regionals, winning at RIT and going to Atlanta to compete in the Championships. There, we won the Newton division and made it to the first rounds on Einstein Field, for our best performance ever. At Fingerlakes, we won the General Motors Industrial Design Award.

2010

In 2010, the game took it's inspiration from soccer. Game pieces were regulation soccer balls and kicking or rolling them into openings in the end of the field. Getting across the field was complicated by a hump across the middle. If your robot couldn't get over that, it had better be short enough to go through a tunnel in the middle!

Balls returned to the field were rolled down a superstructure to land in the opposite end of the field. At the end of the game, for bonus points, robots could hang themselves off the superstructure. Lessons learned from the game in 2004 helped us there.

The Warlocks entered the game with a robot featuring mechanum wheels and holonomic drive, able to kick the ball across the hump and score with reasonable accuracy. A pitchback net was used to deflect the balls back to our end of the field when they fell off the superstructure.

The final touch was our hanging mechanism, which extended up to place hooks on the bar and a winch that hauled it up once attached. It was quite effective.

2011

Logomotion brought back the inflatable pieces, this time in four shapes, white circles, red squares, and blue triangles, with yellow bonus rings. The pieces were to commemorate the design of the FIRST Logo by Dean's brother, Bart Kamen.

The yellow rings were placed during autonomous play and doubled the score of the rings that were placed over them later. The goal was to hang rings on pegs at the end of the field in order, to create the FIRST logo. The higher pegs were worth more, so high-reaching robots were the norm.

The end-of-game bonus was unique this year. Each robot could carry a minibot, whos job was to climb a pole to the top, tripping a light. The first one up one of the four poles got the biggest bonus and each one therafter during the 15 second bonus period, got slightly less. Being able to be deployed and climb to the top of a ten-foot pole quiclky was quite a design challenge for the little bots.

The team attended the Buckeye Regional bringing home the Silver medal as well as the Website Excellence Award, Coopeertition Award and the award for the best minibot! We also attended the Championships in St. Louis.

2012

Rebound Rumble brought the game of basketball to the robotic arena, using 8-inch foam basketballs and four basketball hoops, complete with nets at the ends of the field. The higher the hoop, the more the points.

In the center of the field were three platforms that could tilt like a teeter-totter. Any balls not held by the robots at the beginning of the game were placed on these balancing bridges, which spanned over a obstacle bump across the center of the field.

During autonomous, the robots could shoot three balls and pick up others. Our robot was capable of shooting our basketballs, taking balls from another robot and shooting them, or turning around and getting the balls off one of the ramps.

The main part of the game, of course, was a free-for-all chasing balls, picking them up and shooting them. Human players could throw the balls for points as well, but mostly served to pass them to the robots.

At the end of the game, points were awarded if robots could get onto and balance the bridges. You could only use the bridge of your own alliance color and if you could squeeze all three robots on, it was a big bonus. The center, "Coopitition Bridge," was neutral territory and if a robot from each alliance could balance on it, they received a coopertition point for both alliances. It didn't gain points for the match, but affected the ranking system for the final rounds. It was a controversial aspect of the game.

The Warlocks built a very effective shooting robot, called Zeus, and had some effective autonomous strategies that usually put us ahead at the beginning of the match. We won both the Fingerlakes and Buckeye Regionals, and attended Championships in St. Louis, where we went into the quarterfinals in the Curie division. The Buckeye Regional also awarded us the Xerox Creativity Award and Website Award.

2013

This time, it was a game of frisbee, with robots throwing discs through openings at the end of the field for points.

Two pyramids in the center of the field that looked a bit like jungle-gyms, were both goals and the end-of-game bonus. A small area at the top could receive discs for point, especially special colored ones during the endgame, but the main purpose of the pryamids were to climb. Three levels of rung were worth higher levels of points if a robot could hang from them at the end of the match. Some specific rules made this harder then it sounds, for instance robots were not allowed to touch or be supported by more than one level. You couldn't just reach from the ground up to the third level.

The Warlocks built a robot that could hang at the lowest level very quickly, eschewing the higher levels to conceentrate on shooting and scoring points throughout the game. We could shoot the discs we started out with during autonomous very effectively and were able to turn and pick up additional discs immediately. Our teleop shooting was also very good and we were able to score points in the highest goal from many areas of the field.

We attended Fingerlakes (Xerox Creativity Award) and Buckeye regionals again, bringing home the silver medal from Cleveland after we broke down in the final round after going undefeated. Ironically, we also won the Quality Award.

2014

This year's game brings back a large workout ball to throw through various openings for varying points. A truss across the centerline of the field is used to score additional points for tossing the ball over it. The game focuses on cooperation between alliance robots and increases the points scored for assists where robots interact to bring the ball down the field.

We have designed a strong and compact robot this year using a base fabricated out of a sheet metal design our CAD students drew and cut, punched, and folded by our sponsors. Another sponsor has powder-coated many of the chassis components, making this one of our best-looking robots. Our shooting-catching mechanism uses elastic tubing drawn back by a motorized winch to shoot the ball. A two-stage pneumatic cylinder allows us to quickly and precisely go to four different shooting positions and a hinged wrist joint allows the roller arm to pick up balls from the floor with ease.

At the Buckeye Regional, we were ranked #2 with a 9-2-0 record. As #2 Alliance Captains, we chose 1731 and 3484 to join us. We were eliminated in the semi-finals after winning our way through the quarters.

We also won the GM Industrial Design Award and one of our students, Mike Primerano, was chosen for the Dean's List Finalist #1.

In the Fingerlakes Regional, we fought to be ranked #1, ending up with a 12-1 record. We chose team #20, The Rocketeers, to be our second pick and were surprised to find team 378, The Circuit Stompers still available for the last pick of the day. It turned out to be a winning alliance and we won the regional against some very good teams.

The win at RIT gives us a spot to compete at the Championship Event in St. Louis on April 24-26, 2014. We hope to attend and have a lot to do to get ready.