I was wondering if the judges care about the history of your group and the challenges you face (not with the robot)? For example: “We don’t get a lot of funding for parts”, “our class doesn’t have the game pieces/field”, “we have to learn on our own with little help”, etc.
Just wanted to know if the judges care about these types of things when they make their decisions or if they just care about the robot.
Me personally have seen that it does make you stand out in your unique way. I would say most judges would add this to their opinions and care about stuff like this.
I would say that these things, especially budget, are good to add to the journal as long as the main focus of the journal is still the robot. Try to connect back to how it may have affected your robot, its performance, or your design process. For example, explain how you chose to use steel not because it was better, but because you needed to save your limited aluminum supply for another aspect of the robot or how you didn’t have a mentor to help teach you RobotC, so another team/website/teacher helped you.