Hi, we’re Powercut Robotics, an FTC team from London, and Into the Deep is our second year in the First Tech Challenge. Despite last year being our rookie year, we got into the finals, and went on to win the Think Award, as well as the Divison 1 Finalist Alliance. We learnt a lot along the way (mostly from our mistakes!) and we would like to share that with any teams who are interested.
Having code for the autonomous period sets your team apart.
We realised at regionals how having a programme for the autonomous really sets your team apart. Most teams have no code for it, so even just having your robot drive forwards and push a sample into a net zone will give you an advantage. This also demonstrates your coding skills to the judges, who decide who wins awards.
Don’t let not having a game field stop you: last year, when we did not have one, we taped the floor with the measurements of the game field in order to calculate the dimension needed for our autonomous driving.
Once you are confident with your autonomous, another thing which will prepare you apart is having multiple different programs. Of course, you will need one for each of the four starting positions, but it can also help to have multiple for each: for example, one for if your alliance partner is able to drive forwards and use their half of the field, and one for just you.
The engineering portfolio is incredibly important.
As all the members of our team were doing FTC for the first time, we did not know about the importance of an engineering portfolio. This meant that we went to regionals without one. The effect of this was that, despite winning awards and nearly winning the final match of the day, we were unable to progress until finals (we explained this and were allowed to participate in finals using a Wildcard).
The engineering portfolio is a 15 page document, in which you need to write about your team’s journey, and your robot. To the judges, the most important thing is seeing iterations: how your robot’s design and your choices have changed based on problems and how you have overcome them.
Once we learnt this, and wrote our portfolio for finals, we won the Think Award, which was for the content documented in this. You can download and read our portfolio from last year at https://powercut-robotics.org/resources/.
You can also find more information on writing your portfolio at Game Manual Zero: https://gm0.org/en/latest/docs/awards/portfolio.html.
Your behaviour at competitions is important to your performance in awards.
It may seem obvious, but the judges are also watching your behaviour throughout the day, in matches, the pit area and to other teams. Teams who are rude, obnoxious or otherwise unhelpful will be ignored when judges are picking award nominees and winners. This can be easily summarised in FTC’s motto, Gracious Professionalism: essentially, being competitive while still being respectful and still helping other teams.
Teams who support other teams will also be noticed: one member of our team helped a team without any code to start their robot, and he was later nominated for the Jack Petchey award, which he won.
If you can, prepare for you judges interview
Another surprise to us at regionals was that we are interviewed twice by the judges, once in a room where you present, and once in the pit where they will ask you questions specific to the award you might win. For the first meeting, it is helpful to prepare a talk (no longer than a couple of minutes), explaining your team, your journey and all the things about your robot. The judges want to know the complex stuff, so if you have used any maths or complicated code, let them know.
Another thing the judges like is seeing that every team member is important. For smaller teams, we like to have each person present about what they did, saying a few words about their part in building the robot. If your team is larger (which ours was last year), you may want to show them your ‘subteams’, or what different groups of people have worked on, e.g. building or outreach.
Have fun!
The most important thing at competitions is to have fun! If all your team are enjoying themselves and trying their best, you are more likely to succeed.
Thanks for reading!
We hope these tips help you this season, and we wish you the best of luck in your upcoming competitions.
