Game Discription

In honor of the 40th an­niver­sary of the 1969 moon land­ing, the field is made with a spe­cial ma­te­r­ial and teams have to use spe­cial wheels. With those two fac­tors, the ro­bots have very lit­tle trac­tion to repli­cate the moon’s low grav­ity. Each ro­bot, three per team, pulls a trailer be­hind them. The ro­bots from the other team tries to get a ball into the op­pos­ing team’s trail­ers.

Official Game Rules

LU­NACY is played on a 54′ x 27′ low fric­tion field. Ro­bots are equipped with slip­pery wheels and pay­load trail­ers. LU­NACY game pieces are “Or­bit Balls” des­ig­nated as Moon Rocks, Empty Cells, or Su­per Cells. Two three-team ro­bot al­liances col­lect and score Or­bit Balls in trail­ers at­tached to the op­pos­ing teams’ ro­bots. Hu­man play­ers are po­si­tioned around the perime­ter of the arena and can score from their sta­tions. Ro­bots are au­tonomous dur­ing the first 15 sec­onds of play, and tele­op­er­ated for the re­main­ing 2 min­utes. Trail­ers be­gin each match empty, and ro­bots may be loaded with up to 7 Moon Rocks by their team prior to the start of the match. Hu­man play­ers are equipped with 20 Moon Rocks, less than the num­ber they load into their ro­bot, and a quan­tity of Empty Cells and Su­per Cells de­ter­mined by the out­come of their pre­vi­ous match. If a team has not yet played a match, the hu­man player re­ceives 4 Empty Cells and 2 Su­per Cells. Moon Rocks and Empty Cells scored in an op­po­nent’s trailer, at any time and by any player, are worth 2 points. Su­per Cells scored in an op­po­nent’s trailer are worth 15 points. Su­per Cells must be “ac­ti­vated” be­fore they can be played. Ac­ti­va­tion oc­curs when a ro­bot de­liv­ers an Empty Cell from their Out­post to their Fu­el­ing Sta­tion. Empty Cells can be de­liv­ered through­out the match. Su­per Cells may only be played dur­ing the last 20 sec­onds of a match.

Our Robot

Specifications

  • Height: 50”, Width:27.5”, Length:37.5”
  • Weight: 117 lbs.
  • Speed: 12 fps

Overview

Mizuki was de­signed to be an com­pet­i­tive ro­bot. Our ro­bot is ex­tremely ma­neu­ver­able and is ca­pa­ble of rapidly fir­ing balls into the op­pos­ing al­liance trail­ers.

Design

The ro­bot de­sign was in­ten­tion­ally kept as sim­ple as pos­si­ble to al­low us to con­cen­trate on per­fect­ing the de­sign. Our con­veyor sys­tem is a two-staged con­veyor sys­tem that uses a solid-core round ure­thane belt­ing. The two stage con­veyor sys­tem al­lows us to eas­ily con­trol how many balls we have in our pos­ses­sion and where they are in our sys­tem at one time.

Mizuki

Drive System

The drive train uti­lizes six dri­ven rover wheels. Each side is dri­ven with a CIM mo­tor us­ing a kit of parts gear­box.

Manipulator

Balls are launched by a sin­gle ro­tat­ing trac­tion wheel dri­ven by a CIM mo­tor. The tur­ret is ro­tated by a win­dow mo­tor. This shoot­ing sys­tem is highly ac­cu­rate. We are able to con­trol the ex­act dis­tance a ball is launched by sim­ply con­trol­ling the speed of the CIM mo­tor. We chose to mount the cam­era di­rectly on top of the tur­ret and are able to ro­tate it 30º in ei­ther di­rec­tion.

Our Success

2009 Wisconsin Regional

Our team attended the 2009 Wisconsin Regional held March 12-14th in Milwaukee. We ended 14th seed and were eliminated during the semifinals. We won the Motorola Quality Award and the Underwriters Laboratories Industrial Safety Award.

2009 10,000 Lakes Regional

Our team attended the 2000 Minnesota 10,000 Lakes Regional held April 2nd-4th in Minneapolis. We ended 38th seed and were eliminated during the semifinals. We won the Autodesk Visualization Award, the Motorola Quality Award and the Underwriters Laboratories Industrial Safety Award.

Other Components

  • Website team worked on the website.
  • Safety team made sure the entire robotics team was unharmed. Thanks to their efforts, we won the UL Industrial Safety Award.
  • Animation team did an amazing job making the safety animation and their annual entry to the Autodesk Visualization Award, which we won.
  • Awards Won: Motorola Quality Award (twice), UL Industrial Safety Award (twice), and Autodesk Visualization Award.
Website Excellence Award