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Preparing for Judging

Those new to FIRST and FTC often focus on the robot and the on-field competition, and while that is a core component of the FTC experience, it is not the only measure of a team or its success.  The judged awards in FTC focus on on-field experience but also place emphasis on the design, documenation, outreach, and other aspects of an effective FTC team's experience.  Preparing for judging in FTC takes an understanding of the requirements for each award and preparation.  As part of our self-analysis this season we have gone through an assessment of our team's performance in this area focusing on identifying areas we can improve on in the future.  During that process we realized that there was not a central location where we could go and find the resources we found to be necessary to both analyze our strengths and weaknesses and improve those identified weak areas.  During the process of mentoring two rookie teams this season we also realized that this entire process is a challenge, particularly understanding the judging process.  Yes, there are similarities to FLL but there are significant differences too.  This section of our website is a result of those realizations.  We have tried to combine basic information on the judging process at FTC events with support for a self-analysis process in this page. We hope this information is helpful to others.

FIRST is not about winning awards, it is about exploration and self-improvement.  However, as a measure of those areas and to acknowledge excellence awards are given to teams for a variety of achivements.  In order to adequately prepare in those areas it is first important to know what awards are available, what factors into judges deciding which teams are in the running for each, and what the rules say about each.  The best single source for a list of the 2015-16 Award Descriptions is a PDF document from FIRST.

Awards within FIRST and FTC are ranked in a hierarchy for purposes of advancement from Qualifiers, to State Championships, to Super Regionals, and ultimately to World Championships.  A certain number of teams advance from each level to the next level.  Winning on the field and winning judged awards are the indicators of who advances at each level.  The official list is located in the Game Manual Pt 1 on page 13, but an abbreviated list is below to illustrate the point.

 

1. Host Team (for qualifiers - if allowed)

2. Inspire Award Winner

3. Winning Alliance Captain

4. Inspire Award – 2nd place

5. Winning Alliance 1st Team Selected

6. Inspire Award  - 3rd place

7. Winning Alliance 2nd Team Selected

8. Think Award Winner

9. Finalist Alliance Captain

10. Connect Award Winner

11. Finalist Alliance 1st Team

12. Rockwell Collins Winner

13. Finalist Alliance 2nd Team

14. PTC Design Winner

15. Motivate Winner

16. Control Winner

17. Highest Ranked Team not otherwise advancing

18. Think 2nd Place

19. Next Highest Ranked Team not otherwise advancing

Being able to field a reliable robot and always demonstrating Gracious Professionalism are the first two things to think about in FIRST.  Each applies to many of the awards - but Gracious Professionalism applies to all the awards.  All of a teams behavior, and the behavior of each of its individual members, is "fair game" for judging at any event under the Gracious Professionalism umbrella.  Formal judging has two stages - Team Review and Field Interviews/Observations.

 

Team review refers to the official team presentation time with a panel of judges at an FTC event.  Typically this is a schedule event and is usually early in the process, often before any of the matches.  The entire team meets with a panel of 3 or so judges.  They bring their robot, present their Engineering Notebook, and answer questions that the judges pose to them.  This formal judging typically lasts 15 minutes and is composed of both team presentation and judge Q&A time for the team.  Notebooks are retained by the judges for further review and sharing with the entire panel of judges for the event.  There are a variety of sources of support in developing an Engineering Notebook, the best single source overview we have found was developed by the Univ of Idaho's 4H Extension service. 

 

What is it that judges are looking for during the formal interview, and in just 15 minutes?  Some have said that the judging process is "mysterious" on the official forum discussions of FTC.  It certainly felt that way to us the first time we went into the judging room without our coaches.  We found a Florida FIRST FTC manual on judging and awards that helped us.  One small section is very clear and concise in what is being looked for by the judges.

 

Judges will chat with your team for 10 to 15 minutes and they’ll cover the following elements:

  • Creativity

  • Teamwork

  • Strategy

  • Enthusiasm

  • Design

  • Communication

  • Function

  • Outreach

  • Design Process

  • Funding Plan

 

The Florida manual has a chart that maps out various aspects of the judging process to the awards under consideration, and includes things like disqualifications and adjustments.  It's complicated, and applies directly only in Florida, but we found it helped out team walk through the process of what goes into judging each of the awards.  One thing to note is that every single factor points to the Inspire Award.

 

Finally, the official FIRST FTC Judge's Manual is available in PDF format for download and review by teams.  This is the guide that all volunteers that are gracious enough to donate their time and energy as judges have to read in order to fill the role of judge at a FIRST event. 

FTC has also provided a variety of resources for teams to use to self-assess.  Officially FIRST has taken the position that it is a part of the FIRST process for teams to engage in this process and not rely on outside feedback for improvement.  However, they have developed some tools to support teams who wish to engage in this process.  Two documents are of particular use in our experience.

 

  1. The Team Engineering Notebook Self-Reflection document - a 1 page check list of items that each notebook should have.  FIRST provides a self-reflection took for the Team Engineering Notebook in both PDF and WORD formats as a good starting point for this process. 
     

  2. FTC Team Judging Session Self-Reflection Sheet - a 2 page document with instructions.  "Prior to the Event, Teams should complete the Self-Reflection sheet portion (top section only). After their Judging Interview, Teams should complete the remainder of the Self-Refection sheet – ideally as soon as possible so that clear details can be recorded before they are forgotten."

We hope that these comments and recommendations have been helpful.  If you have suggestions about additions, modifications, clarifications, or other ideas please let us know!

There are a number of resources to help with this more formal portion of the presentation at judging, but the single most helpful to our team, all of whom have been in FIRST either in FLL or FTC previously, is the video below.  The video was prepared in 2013 by FTC 3550 Beta, who are an FTC World Championship Inspire Award Winning team.

Recently the 2015 FTC World's Inspire Award winners - FTC 3595 Schrödinger’s Hat were asked how they presented our season to the judges.  Here's what they said:

"The most important thing that we tried to emphasize in judging is the availability of opportunities in FIRST, and what comes about when they are taken advantage of.  FIRST’s tagline for that world tournament was “More than Robots,” and what we are writing about today is a subset of that focus. FIRST is an incredible program, with numerous opportunities for internships, travel, scholarships, networking, collaborations, and more. But many teams are not adequately aware of these opportunities, and as such they don’t get quite as much out of FIRST as they otherwise could."

 

"Taking advantage of as many opportunities as we can has been one of our team’s biggest focuses over the past year and a half, and because of this we have gotten even more out of FIRST than we had before. When teams take advantage of one single opportunity, it can snowball, and teams can wind up with many chances to help and to learn from others. For example, here is a story that we told during our judging at Worlds. In the summer of 2014, we volunteered to give two “Gear Up with FTC” presentations for FIRST’s online conference. Because of one of those presentations, we were asked by National Instruments to help them with a “LabVIEW Quick Start Guide” for teams. As a result of that, we were asked to remotely host a teacher training on programming in Sydney, Australia. The other Gear Up with FTC presentation led to multiple collaborations with FIRST: we were asked to speak during an Ask An Expert call on electrostatic discharge about ways to minimize ESD through robot wiring. We were also asked to write large portions of FIRST’s robot wiring guide for teams. When we gave the two Gear Up with FTC presentations we had no idea how many amazing opportunities would come about as a result of them, or that they would become some of the most rewarding parts of our season."

Team 3550 - Beta has also developed a written checklist and guide to judging and interviewing that is useful both in reviewing and has a list of possible questions judges may ask.  It's another source of information and preparation for team member to help get ready for judging.

In our effort to stay up-to-date and review new materials we discovered that the 2016 FTC World Championship Inspire Award winners - FTC 7013 Hot Wired Robotics have developed a variety of online resources to help other teams.  Given their success, and generiousity, we thought adding their recommendations here to be very important.

HotWired Robotics also offered a list of Judging strategies that have led them to be the 2016 World Champions.  Their website can be found at:  http://hotwiredrobotics.org/

​

Some of the strategies that we use are:

  • Start with the Team Goals and fill in the story

  • A strong opening – we used the robot to pop out

  • Clearly identify award categories we are going to talk about

  • Use a live robot and show its capability

  • Explain iterative effort – show versions of prototypes or designs

  • Showcase key learning’s, changes in design strategy

  • Most importantly, clearly highlight the Impact of Outreach

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