Where Lunacy took FIRST Competitions to a whole new level in 2009, Breakaway brings them back down to Earth with a set up that both participants and spectators find easy to understand.

The closest analogue to Breakaway is soccer. However, different from soccer, Breakaway is played on a field with two gigantic bumps, twelve balls flying everywhere, and six 120 pound robots.

The field is 54' x 27'. There, two 1' tall bumps stretch the 27' width of the field and split it into three sections: the red zone, the blue zone, and midfield. In the middle of each bump there is a tower, with a platform 20" above the floor and piping that extends to a height of seven feet. The return bars, used by the human players to return balls into play, rest on top of the tower. At each corner of the field there is a goal with a vision target above it (to help robots using cameras to score). The goals are 24" high and 48" wide, with a small ramp leading up to them. The two red goals are positioned next to the red alliance station and the two blue goals are next to the blue alliance station.

The game starts out with 12 balls positioned that, for each alliance, there is one ball in their zone, two in the midfield, and three in their opponents zone. Each alliance must start with one robot in the red zone, one in the blue zone, and one in the midfield.

Each alliance is made up of three teams. The robots must work together by doing different tasks, depending on which section of the field they are in. The rules this year make it nearly impossible for all of the robots to be doing the same thing (scoring, defending, etc).

The main goal of Breakaway is to shoot balls into the goals at each corner of the field. Each alliance will be aiming for the goals of its same color. There are no limitations on where a robot can score from, but balls must stay in the goal to be counted. To help with this each goal has a small ramp leading up to it, damping chains, and memory foam backing. Each scored ball is worth 1 point.

The goals funnel into a corral, where the balls come to rest. From here the human players can pick the balls up and hand them to another human player who will use a trident to return them to play on the overhead return bars.

The periods in Breakaway are the same as most FIRST games: the match begins with a 15 second autonomous period, followed by a two minute teleoperated period. Unique to Breakaway is the finale, the last 20 seconds of the teleoperated period. During this period, robots can try to climb the tower nearest their alliance station or physically support other robots. Each robot on the tower earns 2 bonus points and each robot supported solely by another robot earns 3 bonus points.

At the end of the match the points scored by balls are added to the bonus points scored in the finale and the alliance with the most points wins.

For a more in depth explanation of the game, please read the FIRST Competition Manual or watch the FIRST Lunacy video on our video page.

Images courtesy of FIRST.