Skills Clarification

VEX Robotics Competition Discussion VRC > Nothing But Net (15/16)
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  We would like clarification on the skills qualification for this year's world championship. Our first question is on the legality of the scores from the Utah BATC skills competition on March 5th. At this event while 17 teams were registered only 7 actually ran. On page 52 of the handbook (http://www.roboticseducation.org/documents/2016/02/vrc-event-planning-resources-guide.pdf) it labels an official qualification event as having a minimum of 16 participating teams. We would like clarification on why scores at this event which had only 7 participating teams are considered official worlds qualifying scores. We are especially interested in this event because our RECF representative told us we needed 16 teams at our skills event to be able to count our scores toward the world ranking list. For an event we made we spent lots of time and effort to make sure we would have 16 teams to ensure that it was a qualifying event not a scrimmage. We are also aware that other scores have been taken down for violating rules including not having enough teams participating and are wondering why this event is an exception.
   Our second question is why in programming skills the team ranked 32nd was invited to worlds. While they did have the same score as the 30th ranked team there is a flowchart outlining how ties should be broken in page 3 of Appendix B of the Nothing But Net Game Manual. After the highest score the next tiebreaker is the next highest score posted by the teams. It is our understanding that these procedures were how teams were labeled as 30 vs 31 or 32 in the first place. Therefore why was an invite sent to teams who were close but not in the top 30 instead of having the tie breaking procedures followed. If they are being awarded a slot to worlds for being close to the top thirty then shouldn't consistency be reflected in the robot skill rankings?

Thank you,
Team 2527A, The Five

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Team 2527A,
The REC Foundation is looking into the event referenced in your post. Additionally, we have put systems and processes in place to prevent this issue in the future. It is also important to point out that the REC Foundation might make an exception to some of these rules in order to provide the most affordable and accessible robotics program on the planet. Some of the reasons that we might make an exception include:

  1. Weather related events,
  2. Geographic considerations,
  3. Population density, and
  4. Other extenuating circumstances.
    While this response may not answer all of your questions related to this event, I’m certain that you understand that we remain committed to upholding the integrity of the competition (and we have done so).

The REC Foundation elected to extend VEX Worlds invitations to the top 32 ranked teams in Programming Skills. You are correct that there are “tie breaking procedures” that govern the skills challenges. In this case, we decided that we would invite the teams ranked 31st and 32nd because their highest programming skills score was tied with the team ranked 30th. There was no tie in Robot Skills, thus we didn’t invite additional teams. This is consistent with how teams have been invited from the Global Skills Rankings for many years.

Best,
Brad

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