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MAE Sportsball!
Fall 2018
In celebration of UCSD Athletics’ impeding move up to Division I, the FA18 robot contest is MAE 3 Sportsball! MAE 3 students will design robots capable of performing scoring actions of football, basketball, and soccer using sports balls (aka hacky sacks). Robots have the option of launching sports balls into a floor mounted area (soccer goal), into a short basketball hoop, or between vertical uprights (field goal). As the difficulty of scoring increases, the point value also increases!
In professional sports, versatility has traditionally been a highly valued trait because of its rarity, and athletes that are good at multiple facets of a game become superstars. Examples of these superstars include Kobe Bryant (All-Defensive First Team and league scoring leader twice) and Babe Ruth (one of only two players to hit 15 home runs and pitch 50 innings in a season). But what if this versatility had to extend between multiple sports? Michael Jordan had an unparalleled professional basketball career but famously never progressed past the AA minor league level as a baseball player and returned to basketball. Deion Sanders was cut by multiple MLB teams, leaving him to finish his professional career as exclusively a football player. We are challenging the MAE 3 students to create robots that succeed where these players could not.
Competition:
Two robots will compete head-to-head for 60 seconds. Robots will try to score as many sportsballs as possible via field goal, basketball shot, or soccer goal. All scoring will be done at the completion of the contest after all parts have finished moving.
Sportsball Scoring:
Six sports balls (approximately 2.5" in length and 2 oz. in weight) start align along an edge of each team’s half.
To score points, a team must move a sportsball into one of the four areas listed below:
Zone A: floor on opponent’s side -> 1 pt
Zone B: in the “soccer goal” (between the goal walls, under the roof and past the ridge on the floor) -> 2 pt
Zone C: in the “basketball hoop” (completely within the walls) -> 5 pt
Zone D: through the “football goal post” (completely past the cross bar, passing over the cross bar and under the top bar and completely within the uprights) -> 20 pt
To score points, the sportsball must be COMPLETELY PAST ALL PLANES OF THE SELECTED SCORING AREA. This means no part of the sportsball can touch an imaginary plane upward from the walls of the basketball hoop, the post of the soccer goal, the cross bar of the football goal post etc. However, the sports balls can be piled higher than the walls of the basketball hoop, so long as none of the pile touches that imaginary plane.
No defense is allowed in the plane above any goal.
Not shown in the above figures are a container (net/box) behind the football goal posts to catch scored sportsballs.
The Starting Boxes and Climbing the Wall:
Robots must fit entirely within a 10x10x10in starting box at the start of the competition, but can be located in any position within the team's half of the of the field given that it is not touching the soccer goal, field goal posts, basketball hoop, or any of the sportsballs.
Robots are allowed to cross into the opposing team's half of the table. HOWEVER: robots must return to their starting side of the table before the clock expires or they will suffer a 30 POINT DEDUCTION.
Tie Breakers:
In the case of a tie, the robot who scored more in the highest-weighted goals shall win (ex. a robot scoring 1x through the football goal post will have a tiebreaker over a robot scoring 4x in the basketball hoop). If that is not sufficient, the second tiebreaker is the team who scored the first sportsball wins!!
Robot Contest Results from Fall, 2018
Complete Contest Pyramid and Results
Pyramid 1, Pyramid 2, Pyramid 3, Top 3
Contest Winners
Team 24 - Stingray
High Quality Presentation Award
Team 32 - Kingfisher
High Quality Animation Awards
Team 13 - Lucky 13
Team 05 - TJ
High Quality Design Feature Award
Team 20 - The Mollusk: Nautilus shaped gear to set/release the launcher
Team 18 - The Throwing Stones: Spider coupling to connect/disconnect winch from drive gear
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