Robotics Education & Competition Foundation
Inspiring students, one robot at a time.

Vex Rapid Reversal

4

scrufferdog
Entry ID #: 5240
Created: Wed, Jan 10, 2018 4:20 AM


Overview Vex Rapid Reversal is a game of positioning and speed based on changing the positions of Skyrise cubes and new foam 'eggs'. It is played on the standard 12" x 12" Vex playing field and separated in half by the stair. Teams score points by scoring cubes on their side of the field or on skyrise posts, and by scoring eggs on their opponents side of the field. At the end of the match, teams must park or balance on the pipes between the stair for additional points.  Scoring The game is designed to be able to be played competitively by both competitive teams and rookie teams. For newer teams, cubes may be easily scored in their own zone without crossing the stair for 1 point each, knock eggs into the opponents zone for 6 points each and park on the pipes for 5 points each. The more difficult scoring options reward ambitions teams; each cube scored on the posts are worth 3 points each, and balancing robots who are supported entirely by their bar at the end of the match gain 25 additional points each.  Rules Only one egg may be held at a time. Cubes on posts may not be de-scored. The robot must fit within an 18" cube at the start of the match.  Robots may expand horizontally to a maximum of 36". Robots may not come in contact with other robots on their balancing bar during the last 30 seconds of the match. All other standard Vex robot and safety rules apply. Unique Interactions Irregular foam eggs were chosen to give a multitude of design choices for interaction, and the most variability when thrown for this game so that drivers must adapt thought the match.  Stairs are a brand new obstacle for teams to overcome and allow teams with the capability of crossing them to shorten their driving paths dramatically while still allowing teams with a simpler approach to driving over the 4 bars to cross the field. Balancing is a band new endgame challenge robots must face. The 25 additional points from balancing on the bar are huge in comparison to other point values. Not being allowed to be supported by anything but a circular tube means lots of new and innovative solutions will be necessary to overcome this challenge. The sheer number of game objects on the field and their likelihood of cluttering the field either intentionally or unintentionally after robots throw them, adds a new positioning aspect to the game as teams will have to figure out how to get through clusters of game objects and avoid obstacles potentially made by their opponents or that they make for themselves. Software This year was the first year for our new animators to use rendering and animating software like Autodesk Maya and Arnold. We used Autodesk Inventor and Maya for modeling and animation and rendered in Maya's Arnold rendering engine before editing in Adobe Premiere. Our goal this year was to create as realistic of a render as we could with limited computing hardware and knowledge with the program. We learned how to use techniques to create realistic textures like bump mapping and surface imperfections to create a field that is not uniform and looks like a real VRC field does. With over 19 days of rendering at 720p, we have learned a lot about the software and hardware requirements of creating realism in animation and hope to take this knowledge to create higher resolution and detail animations in future years.   music - Exhale by Snavs, Fabian Mazur   Make sure to leave comments and suggestions on how we can improve our animations for next year and sign in with Google or Facebook so you can thumb up our video.

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Our full game animation and match explaining and showing how to play our game Rapid Reversal.