● The events
Eight events on a table. Seven more on the floor.
Season One runs entirely on two folding tables — line following, a mini obstacle course, mini sumo, a maze, a drag race, freestyle. No gym to book and no arena to build. The bigger floor events, up to a ten-robot capture the flag, follow once your teams are ready for them.
● Two classes, two kinds of event
The robot fits the event, not the other way round.
A twelve-inch robot has no business on a classroom desk, and a fifteen-centimetre one has no business in a tug of war. So there are two robot classes, and each has its own events.
Tabletop is the $49 Micro. It runs on two folding tables, fits in a drawer, and does line following, sumo, mazes and precision work — the events where finesse and code matter more than mass. This is where Season One lives.
Floor is the $99 Solo and the $599 Team Kit. Bigger, heavier, more powerful, and built for events that need space and shove: sprints, trials, tug of war, and the two big team games.
You can run a whole season on tables and never buy a floor robot. Plenty of schools will.
Both classes share a controller, a sensor set and a coding environment. A student who learns to tune a line follower on a Micro already knows how to program a floor robot. Nothing is thrown away when you move up.
Season One — the Tabletop Series
Running 2026–27Seven events, one $49 robot, and a venue you already have. Green version numbers are settled rules; amber ones are in trial this season and your feedback is what changes them.
Line Follow
The flagship. No driver at all — the robot follows a taped line and the fastest clean run wins. Students tune a control loop until it stops wobbling, and the moment it finally runs smooth is the best moment in the season.
- Format
- Solo · fully autonomous
- Tests
- Sensor calibration, control loops, tuning
- You need
- A printed track or tape on a table
Mini Obstacle Course
Seven obstacles on one table, a driver and a clock. Under a gate 90 mm off the table, through a slalom, over a ramp, through a gap, across a raised strip, a full spin in a circle, and park in the box. Knock something over and it costs you seconds.
- Format
- Solo · driver-controlled
- Tests
- Precision driving, ground clearance, practice
- You need
- Tape, three cans, two books and a clipboard
Drag Race
Straight line, two robots, first to the end. It takes about four seconds and it is the loudest four seconds of any meet. The easiest event to run and the one every new team should enter first.
- Format
- 1v1 · 6 ft lane
- Tests
- Gearing, wheel grip, launch control
- You need
- Six feet of table and a start line
Mini Sumo
Push the other robot out of the ring, on a table, in a class period. Thirty years of robot sumo says this never stops being fun, and it teaches gear ratios faster than any lesson plan.
- Format
- 1v1 · best of three
- Tests
- Torque, weight, wedge geometry
- You need
- A 30-inch printed ring — PDF is free
Precision Stop
Accelerate down the table and stop dead on a target. Sounds trivial. It is not, and the teams who solve it with code rather than instinct clean up.
- Format
- Solo · three attempts
- Tests
- Encoders, control, driver feel
- You need
- A target line and a tape measure
Maze
An unknown maze and a robot that has to find its own way out. This is where the students who like computer science suddenly overtake the students who like building.
- Format
- Solo · fully autonomous
- Tests
- Search algorithms, odometry, IMU use
- You need
- Cardboard walls on a table
Cargo Shuttle
Move blocks from one end of the table to the other, as many as you can in ninety seconds. The only tabletop event that needs a mechanism you designed yourself, so it is where Freestyle ideas usually end up.
- Format
- Solo · 90 seconds
- Tests
- Mechanism design, repeatability
- You need
- Foam blocks and two zones
Freestyle
Students design their own challenge and demonstrate it to judges. The only event where the rulebook is written by the competitor, and the fastest route to a genuinely new event entering the library.
- Format
- Judged · any format
- Tests
- Whatever the team decides to prove
- You need
- Whatever they build
The Floor Series
Phasing in from Season TwoBigger robots, bigger space, bigger teams. These are the events that need a gym — including the two that put five robots a side on the floor at once.
Capture the Flag
Ten robots on the floor. Each alliance guards a flag and tries to carry the other one home. You have five robots and you cannot send all of them — somebody has to stay back, and deciding who is the whole game. You do not need five robots to enter: alliances are drawn at the meet, so a three-robot team is paired with a two-robot team and they work it out together.
- Format
- 5v5 · 3:00 · alliance event
- Tests
- Coordination, force allocation, communication
- You need
- A 20 ft square, two flag stands, tape
Sprint
Two laps of a taped course, fastest clean run wins. The floor-class equivalent of the Drag Race, with corners that actually punish bad gearing.
- Format
- Solo · timed
- Tests
- Drivetrain gearing, driver reflexes
- You need
- 30 ft of floor and a roll of tape
Trials
A ramp, a gap, a rough patch and a tight turn. Teams discover in about ninety seconds whether their wedge is too low and their wheels too smooth.
- Format
- Solo · timed
- Tests
- Ground clearance, traction, chassis rigidity
- You need
- A plywood ramp and a few props
Endurance
Most laps in ten minutes, pit stops allowed. Really an event about building something that does not shake itself apart — and fixing it fast when it does.
- Format
- Solo · 10 minutes
- Tests
- Battery management, reliability, pit repairs
- You need
- The Sprint course
Tug of War
Two robots, one strap, one line. The most direct physics demonstration in the whole library: whoever understood torque and grip wins, every time.
- Format
- 1v1 · best of three
- Tests
- Traction, gearing, motor current
- You need
- A tow strap and a centre line
Zone Control
The marquee team event. Three robots a side in enforced roles — Scorer, Defender, Support — contesting three zones. This is the one that feels like a sport.
- Format
- 3v3 · 2:30
- Tests
- Team strategy, role specialisation
- You need
- A 12 ft square and tape
Combat
One-pound plastic antweights with real weapons, three a side, under SPARC safety rules. Not a classroom event — this one needs a proper box and a trained adult.
- Format
- 3v3 · Open Division
- Tests
- Armour, weapon design, repair
- You need
- An enclosed arena. Clubs only.
● Scoring
Medals per event. Points toward All‑Around.
Every event awards its own medals, so a team can travel home with something even if they only entered one. Placings also convert to points, and the points decide the season standings.
That last rule is the important one. You cannot win All-Around by being brilliant at one thing — a team that only drives well will lose to a team that drives well and writes decent autonomous code. That is deliberate, and it is the whole reason there is a slate instead of a game.
● Open source
The rulebook is a repository.
Every event ships as a pack: the rules, the track or field plan, the scoring sheet, the inspection checklist, and the CAD for any props. All of it free, all of it versioned, all of it yours to fork.
You do not need our permission to run a meet. Download the packs, follow them, and submit your results — that is a sanctioned event. A teacher in a state we have never visited can run a four-event tabletop meet next month.
And you can propose events. If your team invents something better than what is in the library, submit it. Good proposals get trialled at a real meet, and the ones that survive enter the library with your team’s name on them.
rules.pdf ← 4 pages, plain language
track-a3.pdf ← print it, tape it to a table
track-tape.pdf ← or lay it out in tape
score-sheet.pdf
inspection.pdf
CHANGELOG.md ← v1.0, every change dated
LICENSE ← CC BY-SA 4.0
● Questions
About the events.
Do we really only need a table?
For Season One, yes. Two six-foot folding tables pushed together, or four desks. Line Follow, Drag Race, Mini Sumo, Precision Stop and Freestyle all fit in that space. Maze and Cargo Shuttle want a little more but still no gym.
Do we have to enter all fifteen?
No. Most meets run four to six events and a first-year team usually enters two or three. All-Around only asks for three events across at least two different kinds.
Does each event need a different robot?
Within a class, no — one $49 Micro enters all eight tabletop events. Moving between classes does mean a different robot, because a tabletop robot physically cannot do a tug of war and a floor robot would fall off a desk.
We only have three robots. Can we enter Capture the Flag?
Yes. Alliances are drawn at the meet, so a three-robot team gets paired with a two-robot team and the two of you play as one side. You get twenty minutes before the match to agree a plan, which is honestly half the fun.
What does “trial” mean on an event?
The rules are playable but still being refined this season. Trial events score normally and count toward All-Around; we just expect to change wording between meets based on what actually happens. Every change is logged publicly with the reason.
Can we run a meet ourselves?
Yes, and we would like you to. Download the event packs, run the meet, submit results. There is no franchise fee and no exclusive territory. Here is how →
● Get started
One $49 robot and a roll of tape.
Line Follow and Drag Race need nothing else. Run them on a table in an afternoon, then decide how far you want to go.