My team has recently showed interest in attempting to win the Innovate Award. From what I have read, I need to include an Innovate Award submission form in my notebook. Is this correct? In addition, by including this form, does that mean we can’t win other notebook awards, design/excellence, or that we are also able to win the Innovate Award.
We have a digital notebook, it that changes the answer.
Yes, the innovate award form needs to be present at the beginning of your notebook to be considered. Do your best to highlight your innovate information so the judges can review it and be impressed. As always, you will receive the highest award that you have earned, so applying for Innovative award will not affect your chances for excellence award. ( I have heard rumors that this is a common misconception among teams).
For the best information, be sure to look at the Vex guide to judging which has all of the details that the judges are following.
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You will still be elegible for the Excellance, design etc. awards. Infact, one of the criteria for the Excallance Award is to be “top contenders in numerous other catagories”. I think having an innovate award submission would increase your chances at excellance based on this verbraige.
@lacsap probably has some better information, but I hope what I said helps!
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Teams can only earn one judged award. Putting a Innovate submission does not make you ineligible for being considered for other awards.
To build on that, the judged awards have a priority order which you can find in the Vex Judges Guide documatation. For most local tournaments that award the “basic” judged awards, the priority is Excellence, Design, Innovate. It could be the case that the judges feel the team that is the most deserving of the Innovate Awards is also the most deserving of the Excellence Award will give that team the Excellence award. If no other team was “innovative”, it could be the case that the judges withhold the Innovate award.
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Thank you! This helps quite a bit.
Repeated here just to hammer home that you need make it easy for the judges to find the info and it shows how innovative you are. Remember the judges may or may not be robot savvy (the could be another branch of engineering).
Bad:
We made an innovative improvement to our Lady Brown.
Better: On our central lift it is possible for the ball to fall off, we put a part on to stop that.
Even better: Following the path of the ring game element, the intake rollers grab it, and place it onto a lift. The lift moves the ring up to the scoring head. Our scoring head can either let the ring drop or hold it in position. To keep control of the ring we have sliders on either side of the lift. These sliders have rubber fingers that guide the ring up the lift and keep it in place. This is an innovation over other similar designs since the sliders add a third touch point to grasp the ring and keep it from rotating out of position. You will see in similar designs the robot will need to reverse and reset to get the ring into position. Our innovative design tracks the ring at all times, it’s never out of position.
Good luck!
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