2009: Lunacy
The goal of the 2009’s competition, Lunacy, was to collect “moon rocks” and score into trailers attached to the back of opposing robots. Lunacy featured special low friction wheels and was played on a slippery field to simulate the low gravity on the moon. Human interaction played a larger role in this year’s competition with the use of a Payload Specialist and Fuel Station manager, both of which tried to score by throwing moon rocks and bonus “Super Cells” into the trailer.
The first 15 seconds of the game was the autonomous period, where the robots had to operate using a program downloaded into their robot. This was followed by a teleoperated period, where the robots were driven by human players. During this period, empty cells had to be handed to the payload specialist at an outpost, where that robot then had to deliver the empty cell to a human player in one of the corners to get a super cell. The robots could also deliver rocks and other game pieces during the competition to get points.
Watch the game animation here.