[CANCELLED] VIQC, Berthoud Rise Above Remote Skills-Only Tournament, Blended ES & MS, Live, Remote, Remote Judging

General Info

Generally this tournament will be a reserved time-slot remote skills tournament with remote judging with in-person option.

Note that this is a SUNDAY tournament.  Teams are not required to attend the driver meeting early in the day but are expected to understand the current skills match/field/scoring rules.

IN-Person Option:  In case a team does not have access to a full field setup on the day of the tournament, arrangements can be made for the team to use the field setup at the Berthoud Robotics facility (located at 328 Massachusetts Ave, Berthoud CO 80513) during their requested time slot.  During that time, they will be the only team at our facility and there will be minimal tournament staff there to assist.  Teams wishing to use the in-person option must send mail to [email protected] well in advance to make arrangements.  Only the team and up to two coaches can attend in-person (no spectators).  Teams using the BRC facility to participate still need to submit the notebook electronically using the Google form (the Judges will not be at the BRC facility).

You will receive 6 links on Monday 3/15/21

• Link to the inspection and judging time-slot google sheet (choose an available time for each by placing your team # in an available slot).
• Link to a google form for submitting your electronic engineering notebook (typically a pdf file scan of the notebook but other methods will exist).  The form must be filled out and submitted to be eligible for judged awards.
• Link to a similar match time-slot selection google sheet (choose an available time by adding your team # to one of the spots in an available time slot)
• Google link for the early robot and field inspection time slots (Friday 3/19 between 5:30pm and 8:00pm, teams not using the  early slot will use up some of their match time slot for inspection)
• Link to the main Google Meet for the day of the event (inspection, match meeting rooms will be breakout rooms of this main meeting room)
• Link to a separate Google Meet for the Judging Interview (join the meeting, you will be brought into the judging breakout room near your timeslot when judges are ready to interview your team).

Time slot reservations for inspection will be chosen from available times via a google drive spreadsheet where one team will reserve a 10 minute slot. 

The notebooks will need to be scanned to a single PDF or video file (.MP4 or .AVI) file and made available for viewing in advance of the event.  We will also need two photographs of the robot.  Notebook juding will occur prior to the day of the actual tournament and interviews will be conducted using GoogleMeet on the day of the event.  Time slot reservations for judging will be chosen from available times via a google drive spreadsheet where one team will reserve a 15 minute slot. When a team's time slot arrives, the team will be moved to the inspection or judging breakout room.  NOTE:  scanning to PDF or making a video of you flipping pages in your notebook must result in a video (when viewed using your own link) in a electronic document that is readable.  Make sure you scan with enough resolution that the text and diagrams are visible.  If you create a video file, make sure that you flip pages slowly enough and each page is readable.  Judges will be able to speed up the play of your video so slower is safer than too fast.  Settle on each page and wait 2-3 seconds before moving to the next page in the notebook.  IF for some reason you can't make a single PDF, AVI or MP4 file, please send mail along with a test video in a format you can make to [email protected] before submitting your file to ensure that the judges will be able to view the file.

Details on remote judging can be found at this link:  https://www.roboticseducation.org/documents/2020/08/judge-guide-addendum.pdf/

The link provided on the google form for the notebook/robot-video should allow anyone with the link to ONLY VIEW the notebook (download should be disabled).  This will typically be a link to Google Drive, Box Drive, YouTube or some other cloud based storage facility.  Judges will need to be able to view your file with your link using a standard Windows 10 PC via a web browser.  The link should not require any kind of site login (clicking the link should bring the file up in the browser for viewing).  In addition to the notebook, judging requires 2 high resolution photographs, one of the front/side of the robot (showing a license plate) and one from the bottom showing the drive-train (motors and wheels).  In addition, a short (1 minute or less) of the robot being driven around (for instance, showing a practice skills match) can be submitted (not required).

Time-slot reservation for skills matches will be chosen by the teams from available times via a google drive spreadsheet where three teams will reserve a 1.25 period and be moved to the match Google Meeting.  During that 1.25 hour period the teams will indicate they are ready to run through GoogleMeet Chat.  The referees will indicate when they are ready for you to run your match.  The team must have passed inspection to be eligible to run any skills matches.  Once a team is done with a skills run scores are final they get ready for the next skills run.  Teams can arrive at the main meeting early but will remain in that main meeting and not able to participate until their match time slot.  Note there is hard limit of 3 driving and 3 programming skills runs for this tournament and all of those must fit within the 1.25 hour time slot (and recall, you are sharing that time slot with two other teams).  Note that indicating "ready to run" means the following:

• your field is reset and robot is on the field, tether between the robot brain and your joystick is in place
• you are ready to discuss with the referees if you will be using stop-time and how to signal that as well as how you plan to signal the start of the run
• timer is visible on the video camera, sequence for starting and stopping the timer and field control (if used) is known to the referees
• team members and adjult coach are visible in the camera
• team is ready to un-tether, select a program and enable it, and ready to count down 3-2-1
• on the side of the field closest to the camera, having a sheet of paper with your team # taped to the field so we can which field we're looking at (some place that doesn't obscure the view of the refs)

In case a team does not have access to a full field setup on the day of the tournament, arrangements can be made for that team to use the field setup at the Berthoud Robotics facility (located at 328 Massachusetts Ave, Berthoud CO 80513) during their requested time slot.  During that time, they will be the only team at our facility and there will be minimal tournament staff there to assist.  Teams wishing to use the in-person option must send mail to [email protected] well in advance to make arrangements.  Only the team and one coach can attend in-person (no spectators).  Notebooks for teams using the BRC facility for the field still need to submit their notebook using the electronic submission Google form (the Judges will not be at the BRC facility).

Matches and awards presentation (but not the judging interviews) will be livestream broadcast to https://twitch.tv/berthoudrobotics so that spectators can view the proceedings.

Please fill out the online consent forms well in advance of the event using the link on http://events.vex.com.

During inspection, the field and camera setup will be checked against this form:  https://www.roboticseducation.org/documents/2021/01/vrc-remote-skills-field-inspection-checklist.pdf/.  Please be sure that your setup aligns with these rules.

We are looking for judging volunteers.  Send mail to [email protected] if your team can supply a remote judge.  Remote judges read through the notebooks and fill out the judging score sheet for later use.  On the day of the event, judges will hang out in the judging interview

breakout room, starting with the chief justice to describe the flow and later meet with each team in their designated time slot.

If you have any questions, please send mail to [email protected] or call 970.227.5368 if you need immediate assistance.

Grade Level: All

Skills Challenge Offered: Yes

Judging Format: All Remote Judging