A lot more middle school World spots with the addition two new MS Divisions. The distribution of spots by country/state is in the newly added appendix.
https://www.roboticseducation.org/documents/2019/08/qualifying-criteria-vrc-2019-2020.pdf
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An interesting change I saw was in the Robot Skills section. The rule went from this:
to this:
I’m overall pretty excited about this change. My region (where the EPs allowed unlimited skills runs) had some pretty long lines for skills, and I’ve had to leave the line in order to go to matches before. This will mean teams will have to practice their skills runs more beforehand, instead of just showing up and “winging it.”
Hopefully this also ensures a more level playing field between regions. It wasn’t really fair for other regions when teams in my region took 6, 7, or 8 attempts of each (programming and driver) to get their skills scores, considering a lot of regions are already restricting teams to 3 runs.
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Why don’t you just get people to hold lines for your team?
We did that sometimes… But it was difficult with a small team like ours, and sometimes timing was difficult (we had to make sure we didn’t reach the start of the line at the same time as one of our qualification matches).
How many people did you have in your team?
Is there a qualifying document specific to VEX U? I cant find any college specific stuff on the VRC one
There are a few states that now have 8 or 9 qualification spots. However, the table on how spots are allocated to each award skips over 8 and 9. Did I miss something in the document or does the table need to be updated?
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I think that means the extra spots of filled from skills.
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Well… Now that Florida is split into 2 State Championships, if they have 10 spots ea. in HS, as seen in the chart, then there is no direct World spot for either North or South Florida Skills Champions. That, to me, is just ridiculous. Skills was what got our kids motivated in code development in the first place.
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Remember that extra spots from double qualifications (Tournament Champions who also win a qualifying award, teams that previously qualified at Signature Events, etc) are filled from the skills rankings. This means that skills still is, and always will be very important.
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Yes, I understand, but then its a matter of chance getting it. Also, since we only have one MS Championship in the State with 6 World spots, it won’t have a given State Skills Champion World spot either.
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I agree that the situation is very unfortunate, but that is sometimes how things fall. I definitely wouldn’t want to spend so much time working on skills in hopes of making it to worlds if someone double qualifies. At the same time, however, I don’t see any awards that skills should take precedence over given the number of spots. In my opinion, if the world skills ranking still qualified teams for worlds, this wouldn’t be nearly as big of an issue because it would be guaranteed that you would qualify for worlds if you scored high enough.
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Anyone know when and where the update will be posted?
When - when ready
Where - roboticseducation.org
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looking at the time-stamp, I think this is the latest or updated copy - https://www.roboticseducation.org/documents/2019/08/qualifying-criteria-vrc-2019-2020.pdf/
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thanks!
Not sure where the changes… SNE region same for VRC
Yep, went live after my post. It has been updated. Our state gained 2 additional spots because of growth.