Overview

6.270 is MIT's Autonomous LEGO Robot Design Competition that spans the course of 3.5 weeks over each IAP. Every year, teams of 2 or 3 students work together to build robots using LEGO and various electronic components (such as motors, servos, etc.), and program them using C.

Objective

The 2012 competition challenged teams to create robots that would "battle for supremacy" in a post-apocalyptic scenario. The two rival teams start on opposite sides of the playing field, which was a hexagon divided into 6 territories. Players gained points for “exploring” (entering new territories), "capturing territories" (spinning the gearboxes located in each sextant), "mining resources" (pulling levers in order to collect ping-pong balls from dispensers in the 6 territories), and finally "depositing resources" (dumping the collected ping-pong balls into a container in the center of the playing field). While every territory held ten balls, only five could be mined per minute per territory. Each round was 2 minutes long. For the first ten seconds, robots could only explore.

Scoring

• 40 points per mined resource
• 40 points per deposited resource
• 100 points per claimed territory
• 10 points per visited territory (30 points if visited within first 10 seconds)

Competition Rules

• Robots must fit within a 1'x1'x1' box
• All structural components must be built exclusively using LEGO
• No detachable parts allowed
• No LEGO modifications allowed (except to the large baseplate)
• No intentional attacking or crashing into opponent allowed.