Toroid Terror was the 1997 game for the

FIRST Robotics Competition FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) is an international high school robotics competition. Each year, teams of high school students, coaches, and mentors work during a six-week period to build robots capable of competing in that year's game that wei ...

. This was the first year that FRC had a regional event outside its origins in New Hampshire; in addition to

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, regionals were held in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

and New Brunswick, New Jersey, as well as the championship event at a complex set up in the

Epcot Epcot, stylized in all uppercase as EPCOT, is a theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Bay Lake, Florida. It is owned and operated by The Walt Disney Company through its Parks, Experiences and Products division. Inspired by an unr ...

parking lot. It was also the first year in which the scoring object was not a ball.

Field

The playing field is a carpeted, hexagon-shaped area with a central goal. Around the perimeter of the field are three stations for human players, who work with remote controlled robots on the field to score points. At the start of each match, each team has 3 colored inner tubes at their player station and six tubes on the field, located in stacks distributed evenly around the goal.

Robots

Each robot can weigh up to , and must start each match small enough to fit inside a 3' x 3' x 4' space. This had the disadvantage that robots couldn't fit through a standard doorway, and there were rumors of robots being assembled in a room, and when they tried to take it out to ship, it wouldn't fit through a door. The robots are powered by two Skil 12

volt The volt (symbol: V) is the unit of electric potential, electric potential difference ( voltage), and electromotive force in the International System of Units (SI). It is named after the Italian physicist Alessandro Volta (1745–1827). D ...

rechargeable batteries and use motors from Skil, Delco, and Delphi Interior and Lighting, speed controllers from Tekin, pumps from McCord Winn Textron, air cylinders and valves from Numatics, Inc., and a programmable control system supplied by FIRST. Drivers use joysticks from CH Products and switches from Honeywell to remotely control the robots via a radio link which uses RNet wireless modems from

Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, United States. After having lost $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, the company split into two independent public companies, Motorola ...

Scoring

In two-minute matches, the three robots and human players score points by placing the inner tubes onto pegs on the goal, or around the top of the goal. The tubes are color-coded to identify team ownership. Human players are not allowed onto the field, but they may hand tubes to the robots or throw tubes directly onto the goal. At the end of the match, each tube on the goal is worth one point. Each tube on the top of the goal will double a team's score. In addition, each vertical row of three tubes on a corner of the goal will double a team's score. The winner of the match is the team with the highest score. In the event of a tie, the team with the highest tube in a scoring position wins.

References

External links

{{FIRST 1997 in robotics FIRST Robotics Competition games