Question about judging integrity and conflict-of-interest safeguards at robotics championships

Totally agree. And since Innovate already has a prerequisite of being a Design award contender, it really should recognized at the highest level. It is difficult for student-designed robots to make top 40% at higher level competitions, so robot performance should not be attached to Innovate. However, this difficulty is only due to having to compete with the meta-bots/clone bots.