Football / Hockey - rules?

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MechanicalCat
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Joined: Thu Jul 06, 2017 10:35 am

Football / Hockey - rules?

Post by MechanicalCat »

Hi,

We're MechanicalCat aka The Pembrokeshire Robot Builders Club. We're kicking off a 3D-printed AntWeight contest internally, to give our younger members something to get their teeth into.

Some of our members have started informally playing footie/hockey with their Ants. And I've seen a few posts mentioning possible football matches at AWS's. So before we start making up our own rules... could anyone point us to the Ant football (hockey?) rules, please?

Cheers,
Ian.
MechanicalCat.org

PS All our stuff - robot chassis and programmable controllers - is available open-source and free http://fablabpembrokeshire.org/mechanic ... downloads/ . It's not AWS-competitive because it's aimed only at drumming up interest and drawing new builders into Ants. Hopefully many of them will go on to build 'proper' AWS robots.
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BeligerAnt
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Re: Football / Hockey - rules?

Post by BeligerAnt »

Hello and welcome Ian!

I'm not sure there have ever been any "official" rules for antweight football. :)
It's usually a case of pick some teams (2 or more a side), chuck the ball in and stand well back! I think we've played for 3-5 minutes before. Depending on the battery capacity/technology you are using you may need to run short games, maybe 1 or 2 minutes each half.

We have found that it helps a lot if the ball is not too round. A round ball rolls far too well and is almost impossible to control. A golf ball with some small self-tapping screws driven in works well. A heavy ball is better as it doesn't bounce around too much.

There is no concept of fouling and many matches end up more of a rugby scrum or stand-up fight than a football match!

I suggest you develop your own rules to suit your robots, drivers and playing area. You'll soon get to grips with what works and what doesn't and can adjust the rules accordingly. Best to do this before you start a "serious" competition. :)

Good luck!
Gary, Team BeligerAnt
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peterwaller
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Re: Football / Hockey - rules?

Post by peterwaller »

I think Gary has just about covered it the only thing I could add is that the ball often gets trapped in the corners so around 5 cms of 45 deg across each corner tends to keep the game moving better.
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