Competition Preparation!
As we approach our first competition of the season, let’s learn about what goes into the “behind the scenes” to make sure we’re prepped!
Isabel S.
Business Team Prep
The week leading up to the first competition is crunch time for the business team because their role at competitions mainly revolves around talking to judges, stocking buttons, and updating the social media. Let’s dig into the details of what we prepare!
Pamphlets & The Business Plan
During competitions, judges walk around in groups of two or three and interview teams. Some of them interview on specific topics such as build, programming, business, or outreach and others ask a variety of questions, so it is imperative that we are prepared to answer any and all questions. This is where the pamphlets come into play!
In regards to talking to judges at the competitions, the business team creates pamphlets, which provides the judges with information about each of our respective sub teams, to remember us when they consider teams for awards. They give a brief overview of what each subteam does, along with any specific parts or code they used when creating this year’s robot. This way our students can use it as a tool when talking to judges, along with demonstrating using the robot.
We also reuse our pamphlets during the offseason, specifically at our open houses. This is where students can check out our facility, and the different programs we offer, to see if they would like to join the team the following season. When students come in for a tour, they can grab the pamphlets of the different topics that interest them, so they can read the information and have it for when they go home.
Another thing the business team prepares for competitions is our business plan, which entails a description of our overall team. This includes our mission, history, how we intend to grow and expand, and financial details. The business plan operates as another tool we can use when talking to judges because we’re able to pull up specific details and data to further back up our impact as a team, which also sets us up to be in the running for various awards given out at competitions.
Team Awards & Buttons
Another part of what the Business Team prepares for the competition is team awards. We work together with the CAD Team to 3D print the base and the airplanes to create our team awards. We typically hand out four at each competition to other teams to recognize them. Students come up with different names for each award that corresponds to what we’re recognizing the team for. For example, one team award we handed out last year was based on the addition of googly eyes on a robot because we thought that design was both fun and unique. This is one of the ways that our team supports others, while competing at our best.
The business team also works hard to make buttons for each competition, and roughly one hundred buttons are created for each day we compete! We leave a bin outside of our pit filled with buttons. That way, students can come and collect buttons from our team, which is a common hobby for people to collect trinkets from other teams at competitions.
Scouting App
For those unfamiliar with robotics competitions, scouting is the way we evaluate teams throughout the competition to see if they’ll mesh well with our robot. During the qualification matches, teams are matched up randomly in “alliances” (teams) of three robots each. Then, after qualification matches, the teams are “seeded” based on how well they performed during the qualification matches, which includes the factors of their average ranking points earned, average points per match, and so on. These “seedings” are similar to professional sports, the higher rank they are, the better that the team performed. Next during a competition is alliance picking, and this is where scouting comes in handy. We compile the data and notes on each robot to put together the best alliance possible going into elimination matches. We also continue scouting the different alliances that are formed during elimination matches to see what strategies they employ during the match, so we can brainstorm a strategy to best counter them.
Now that you’re more familiar with why we scout, let’s explain what we decided to do regarding the scouting app! This year, we decided to not follow the “traditional” route of coding an app, and instead, use Google Sheets to compile our data at competitions. For this game in particular, we want to take statistics on two aspects: amount of fuel shot and amount of fuel passed. Since gathering that data doesn’t require a lot of different entities that need data inputted, using Google Sheets provides a solution that is easy to use. To make sure we count accurately, we will also be using two tally counters: one for each hand to count both shots and passes. Then, this data will be transferred into a spreadsheet online, which is helpful when comparing overall statistics of different teams during the course of qualification matches.
In future competitions, we hope to have our app fully running and functional, for ease of collecting data. This app is called “WildRank,” and it is an app created by Team 111, WildStang. We’ve adopted their base code and are working to get it set up to collect the data. Some pictures are shown throughout this section for reference of what it looks like.
This app includes a place for scouting match data and pit scouting, so it’ll be useful for when it starts running, to have all of the data stored in one place. Here’s some pictures of the app, which show off the various different “pages” we have to fill in data for.
Stay tuned on our social medias to see us compete!