hello FTC teams and welcome to our judging and awards video series. my name
is Anika, I'm from FTC team 97 94 Wizards exe. we're a 4th year team from
Rockville Maryland in the United States of America and our team mission is to
engage expand and educate teams and communities to promote STEM and FIRST
through our outreach and training programs. This video series is all about helping teams
navigate the judging and awards process in FTC. We have split this up into three
main parts. The first video, which is what you're watching right now, is an
introduction and breakdown of all of the seven awards and what their metrics are
The second video is all about the do's and don'ts of the judging interview, so
how to engage your judges, what the key points to highlight are and stuff like
that. Our third video will go over pit judging and the process of that. In the
middle of your screen, you will see a QR code - you're welcome to scan this QR code
to access our full slide deck and download that if you want to. Let's get
into it. So, what's the point of a qualifier? Yes, the qualifier is the first
event of your season - it's all about advancing to the higher levels - but it's
very important to remember that this is not the main focus. A qualifier is all
about celebrating your accomplishments and your season by sharing your
experiences with other teams and with the judges. So when I was in FLL, the
league before FTC in the FIRST programs, there wasn't so much interaction among
teams. We were all kind of caught up in our own things. But in FTC, it's so
incredible to be able to meet kids and students who have the same interests as
you do from different states and countries all over the world, so make
sure to let loose a little bit, have a good time, meet new people, and enjoy the
qualifier. It's not all about the awards. The qualifier structure will vary a
little bit from region to region, but the general structure is this: in the morning
you will have a 15-minute judging interview. You'll have a five-minute
uninterrupted presentation followed by 10 minutes of Q&A. Depending on your
region, you may be able to continue presenting during this 10 minute Q&A, but
the judges are able to interrupt you throughout to
ask you questions, and you have to answer them
as you go, so be prepared for that.
In the afternoon, you will have a pit judging session which is a follow up from the
interview. In the interview, if, say, the judges like you for a very particular
award, they can have the pit judging members come back to see you in the
afternoon to ask you questions targeted towards that award, so pit judging is
more focused on particular Award. At the same time as pitch are you're going to
have the robot competition, and this makes for quite a busy day so it's
important to stay organized throughout your qualifier and your competition.
We'll cover some tips for being organized later on in our video series.
Let's get into the awards next.
It's very important that you prepare for the awards throughout your
season. The most important thing to do is to read Game Manual Part 1, Sections 4
5 & 10. Sections 4 & 5 have an overview of tournament day and what the structure of
the whole day looks like and this will help you organize your team better for
your event. Section 10 has the detailed criteria for all of the awards. Consider
having a member on your team be the awards role master and this person can
go back and check the worst criteria periodically and especially right before
your competition to make sure that you meet the criteria for your targeted awards.
The next thing to think about is the two categories of awards: engineering
and outreach awards. There are four engineering Awards and two Outreach
Awards so think about mentors that you can reach out to for engineering help
and think about how you can best connect with your community for the
outreach Awards and what you think is going to make the biggest impacts both on you
and your community. It's also extremely important to identify your team goals
for the season. Do you want to go for an award? If so, which award? It's pretty
important to have a few awards in mind that you specifically target. Of course
you can go for all of the awards if you want to, but if you can target one or two
awards, you'll be better able to kind of channel your team's interests and your
team's work towards those one or two awards. You also want to think about what
you want to accomplish with your robot. There's a lot to do and not a lot of
time. It's a good idea to think about doing two or three tasks
on the robot game reproducibly and consistently instead of trying to do
everything and not being very reliable. It's a good idea to do some of the
things all the time instead of all the things some of the time. You want to make
sure that these goals are manageable for your team, your time commitment, and your
experience level, so don't set goals that are so so high that you can't reach them,
because you'll just leave the season not feeling very satisfied. So set manageable
goals. The first engineering award is called the Think award and it's all about
the engineering notebook and design process. You want to clearly describe
your team's journey in the notebook both for the robot and for the outreach. Judges
are only going to look at the notebook if you describe your design process well in
the interview. They will look at the notebook for other awards regardless, but
you want to clearly describe your design process in the interview if you're going
for the Think Award. So talk about how you brainstorm, what your strategy is,
your requirements, your brainstorming your testing, and stuff like that. Make
sure that they know that you're really thinking about the design process like
an engineer. The notebook is not just for the Think Award, however. It's required for
every single judged award. It's also how judges learn about your team! The first
time they see you will likely be when you walk into your judging interview, and
they don't have any prior knowledge about your team's work so having a
detailed engineering notebook is how they know all about your team what your efforts
are, what your initiative is, and everything about you. There are also
several rules and guidelines with the notebook. For example, you can have two
notebooks maximum, and they can only be three inches tall each. There are a bunch
of rules to follow, so you should check out this rules and guidelines document
that I've linked in the description to make sure that you are able to adequately
present your notebook so that they get looked at. It's such a shame that the
teams get disqualified for not following the rules. It's also important to
remember that every judge only has a few minutes per notebook, so you want to have
a clear summary sheet. It is a requirement to have a one-page summary,
but the clearer it is, the easier it is for judges to go through the
book and hit the key points. You also want to include marked sticky notes on
critical pages so they can find the key points. You want to limit yourself to
around 8 sticky notes or 10 at a maximum. If you have too many sticky
notes, that doesn't really help the judges find the key points. You also want
to label these, so for example if it's an entry about prototyping the mineral
mechanism, call it prototyping mineral mechanism or something like that. That
way if a judge is looking for a very particular thing for a particular award,
it's easy for them to just look at the tabs and figure out where they want to
go. You also want to determine how you're going to manage your notebook from the
beginning. This is not something you can leave to the last minute, you can either
have a very detailed notebook, a very simple notebook or something in between,
but you want to make sure that you have the clear vision before right before the
qualifier it's very difficult to re- document everything well right before the
qualifier, so try and keep a running log of your work throughout the season and
consider having one person in charge of making sure that you're up to date with
your notebook log and entries. So there are three more engineering and design
awards to consider. The first is called the innovate award, and this is all about
a unique elegant and reliable solution to one or more tasks on the field and
explaining a clear design process for how you arrived at the solution it's
basically what set you robot apart what makes it different and how you got there
an example of this is from our robot from two years ago I'm not sure if
you're familiar with the velocity vortex game which is from two years ago but one
of the tasks was to lift one kilogram yoga ball onto a center structure this
was called the cat ball task on the right you see a photo of our capital
mechanism we used four arms while most themes used to in judging we would say
something sort of like for our capital mechanism we use four arms this is
innovative because most teams use two arms kind of like a forklift however we
found that using two arms often meant that you will get tangled up in the
central structure making it pretty hard to drop off the cat ball by using four
arms you can just grab the cat ball - at the bottom - at the top grab it lift it
and drop it on top by opening up the arm we found through testing that the cat
ball would sometimes fall out of the bottom arms so we added and 3d so we 3d
printed these two custom-designed yellow pieces that you can see in the photo and
these kind of circus hooks to keep the cat ball in until we opened up the arms
that kind of is a summary of how we could talk about an innovative mechanism
because we explain why it's innovative it uses four arms not to why we chose to
use four arms using two arms often meant that you get stuck in the center
structure and our design process with the mechanism we found that the cap ball
would come out so we made and printed two hooks to keep it in that's a good
way to talk about why you're unique why it's elegant and prove that it could be
reliable or that it probably is reliable because you tested it it also covers the
design process the next award is called the design word and this is all about
using industrial design principles and balancing between form function and
aesthetics this means that your robot is very functional but it also looks really
nice and its robust using initial design principles primarily means using CAD
software's and it's a good idea to use CAD software before you build not as for
documentation CAD allows you to design parts and mechanisms in a 3d system
basically but not in real life so you can catch potential flaws before
spending time building it and this can save you time in the long run you can
also consider things like 3d printing laser cutting custom fabrication
techniques to help make you eligible for the design award
anything that is designed like an engineer would in the real world for
example the final engineering award is called a control award and this is all
about software so using sensors on your autonomous program how you make it
easier to control the robot and make it easier for the drivers to drive it
around how you mint the robot and more self-aware with a control award the most
important thing to do is to submit it unlike all of the other awards the
control award has a specific application that you must fill out to be eligible
the game manual has a control award sample submission sheet so you can just
take that and fill it in even if you don't think you have the best software I
think it's a good idea for every single team to apply for this award
because you never know you might have great software and just not think it so
definitely apply for the control award because it would suck to have great
software but then not be considered for because you haven't turned it in so
check out the game manual for that submission and I'll link that in the
description as well now on to the outreach Awards there are two outreach
Awards the first one is called the connect award and this is about
connecting the dots between community first and the diversity of the
engineering world but really what does that even mean this is all about your
corporate and STEM communities and how you bring them into the first world an
example of this from our team is that we have a mentors from the industry from
different engineering companies small businesses local firms stuff like that
and we invite them to our monthly design reviews where we cover our work over the
past month on robot design and an outreach and they get feedback from our
mentors engaging them in the first world we also go on tours of local companies
and businesses like Stanley Black and Decker to learn more about engineering
and this kind of how we work with our corporate community the next award is
called the motivate award and this is all about getting people involved in
first exciting them about fur it's being motivational and inspirational in a
sense an example of this is going to elementary schools to get kids excited
about robotics hosting info sessions to teach the parents about the program and
then starting a fellow junior teams to get more kids involved in the program
the final award and the highest award is called the inspire award which
celebrates a team that is a strong contender in many award categories
meaning that they rank highly in all of the previous six categories they're a
role model team to other teams the reliability of the robot is important so
you do have to have a reliable robot but it does not carry more weight than any
other category so even if your robot is having an off day you still could be
eligible for this award a common question we get is well how many awards
can we win at one event you can be nominated for multiple awards but can
only win first place for one award so let's say your team wins second place
thing third place connect fourth way or third place innovates are
a second-place design whatever but if they win first place to motivate they
can no longer win first place control if that makes sense you can only be 1st
place for one award but you can still get nominations for other awards if you
win the first place inspire award you cannot be eligible for it at another
qualifier so you can't be eligible for it at another event of the same level in
any other region but you could win it again at the next level of competition
so if you wouldn't add a qualifier you could not win at any other qualifier but
you could then win it at the state level or the next level above that that's
pretty much it for the breakdown of all the awards make sure to check out the
next part of our video series all about the judging interview and if you have
any questions please email us at wizards.exe@gmail.com. Thanks for watching
For more infomation >> Putting You First: Getting a Generator - Duration: 1:34. 
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