Imagine robots playing basketball — except that the baskets are actually trailers being pulled by opposing robots on the run, and the balls are called "moon rocks."

Your bots score points by picking up balls and tossing them in the moving trailers. Strategies include cornering your opponent's bot so it can't move while your bot regurgitates a half-dozen balls in its container in less than two seconds. It's fierce.

Now imagine having to build and program the robots to shoot and run, having been handed a kit containing motors, batteries, wires, pulleys and a control system — but no instructions.

Not surprisingly, the name of the game is Lunacy.

A thousand competitors from 34 high school robotics teams — 24 from Hawai'i, eight from the Mainland and one each from Mexico and the Philippines — gathered at the University of Hawai'i Stan Sheriff Center yesterday afternoon in preparation for some big-time Lunacy competition today and tomorrow.

Even the event's name gets complicated: The 2009 NASA/ BAE Systems FIRST in Hawai'i Regional Robotics Competition. FIRST is an acronym for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.

Qualifying matches begin this morning. Yesterday's session was for practice and to fix broken belts, tighten screws and re-engineer whatever is necessary to make things fit.

Alexander Ho, FIRST regional director for Hawai'i, said before he became involved with the event he looked at robotics as a way for clever kids to create high-tech robots. Now he sees the whole thing as a magnificent learning curve — a way for kids to actively engage in such enterprises as business planning, presentation, fund-raising and marketing.

"It's about life, basically," said Ho, a development specialist for the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism. "These kids are going to find the solutions to whatever problems we might have. They say robotics is kids building robots. It's not. This is robotics building kids."

Corrie Heck, coordinator for the Robotics Organizing Committee and chief communications officer for show host Gov. Linda Lingle, said that while 34 teams arrived, only 33 robots made it to the event. The robot from the Louisiana team got lost in shipment.

How to solve that problem? Simple. Heck said one of the California teams adopted the Louisiana team. Now, both teams will be participating in the competition together.

That's what we call "gracious professionalism," Heck said.

Regional winners advance to the FIRST Championship, April 15 to 18 at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.

Ivan Roblas, who is with the educational arm of the Philippines Department of Science and Technology, came with the team from Manila.

He said it will be Team Lagablab's first appearance in a competition at such a high level.

"We wanted to encourage the teams back in the Philippines to go into robotics, science and engineering," Roblas said.

"We came to win ... we're very optimistic."

Aleigrauh-Malie Aipoalani-Scanlan, 14, a freshman at Nanakuli High and Intermediate School, said she had never laid eyes on a real robot until she saw one recently in the school's robotics class. Now, she's one of the 10 members on the Nanakuli Robotics Team.

"I was was amazed," she recalled at seeing a real robot for the first time. "I was like, 'These things are actually real!' I was so blown away."

Aipoalani-Scanlan remained wide-eyed yesterday as she strolled around the Stan Sheriff Center marveling at what other teams had created for the competition.

"I was like a kid," she said after finishing her tour. "I was going, 'Wow! How do they do that?' "