2011-2012 Rules

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twototwenty
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Re: 2011-2012 Rules

Post by twototwenty »

The illusionist is correct; mission possible has the lowest requirement of funding of all testing events, in my opinion. although my high school has good funds, to a degree, my middle school had nothing, so i know what its like to not have funding. I di both robo cross (the equivalent of robot arm) and junkyard challenge (the equivalent of MP), and junkyard was by far the better event for our inexperienced fundless school, as junkyard was made entirely of scraps and worked well, whereas robo cross needed an good robotic kit, which our school didnt have. (Our robot tipped over right at the begining, and we scored 5 points out of about 100)

By the way, I am also grateful that we are able to voice our ideas here. This forum was a great idea.
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Re: 2011-2012 Rules

Post by illusionist »

This post was deleted by the author because he realized he was in the wrong thread
Last edited by illusionist on March 28th, 2011, 6:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 2011-2012 Rules

Post by Primate »

In terms of actual recommendations to the rules, I do have a couple concerns.

First of all, while I like the idea of allowing teams to choose from multiple tasks, the assigned point values don't necessarily correspond to how difficult it is to achieve a task. What I found is that the point ranking meant a task was conceptually harder, but not necessarily any easier to implement. For example, look at the temperature-decrease task. The first ideas I thought of were overly complex: thermistors, dry ice, peltier coolers, etc. But with the help of these forums, I discovered that a bimetallic strip was a much better solution. My implementation literally consists of three screws and a strip of metal. On the other end of the spectrum, you have the IMA 3 pulley system. Easy enough to figure out, but building a reliable three-pulley apparatus is much more difficult than a bimetallic strip setup. Maybe this is by design--you're awarding points based on creative thinking, and not ease of building--but any team smart enough to look on these forums can discover these ideas without doing any thinking.

Second, the block stacking task this year was a disaster. It's a great concept, and I think it had a whole lot of potential. If we really had been forced to stack five wooden blocks, without walls, strings, magnets, or any other support, we would have seen some truly creative solutions. That, however, was not the point of the task--once clarifications rolled in, we realized the task designer was envisioning we drop five blocks down a chute, or something equally simple. Also, rules clarifications were all over the place--state clarifications banned walls at first, then national clarifications reversed direction and said they were allowed. So, two things: a) make the task description more indicative of the difficulty, and b) make it harder to begin with.

All in all, though, this year's Mission was a huge improvement over last year's. And it's by far my favorite event. I'm crossing my fingers for yet another year.
events 2012 gravity vehicle, robot arm, thermodynamics, tps
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Re: 2011-2012 Rules

Post by questionguy »

This idea might have been mentioned before, but is it possible to give the state directors/supervisors a survey on their competitions. We could find out which events:
1. They thought were the most difficult/easiest to hold
2. What could be done better to improve the events
3. Which events they would like to see come back next year.
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Re: 2011-2012 Rules

Post by Flavorflav »

chalker wrote:
bugsrcool wrote:For years I have heard how hard it is for many teams to compete in Mission Possible, Junkyard Challenge, Robot Ramble and Sumo Bot due to the complicated and expensive nature of these events. Now I am reading that the committee wants to bring in an even more complicated and more expensive event than any two combined???
While it's not in my committee, I disagree that Robot Arm is more complicated or expensive. To the contrary, I think it could be done rather cheaply and simply. There are toy robot arms available online for under $40 that can handle all the tasks in the event. The rules as currently written also allow for a WIDE variety of designs and control mechanisms, which should mean that the majority of students could construct something 'from parts laying around the house'.
I have to disagree with this comment, since I doubt that any stock arm I am aware of would be competitive with a custom-build. I suspect that most of them are both too short and too slow to accomplish much of the task and usually costs a lot more than $40.
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Re: 2011-2012 Rules

Post by chalker »

questionguy wrote:This idea might have been mentioned before, but is it possible to give the state directors/supervisors a survey on their competitions. We could find out which events:
1. They thought were the most difficult/easiest to hold
2. What could be done better to improve the events
3. Which events they would like to see come back next year.
The state directors do give feedback in a variety of ways. Most significantly, at the rules meeting the day after nationals there is a 'round robin' approach where they are able to go around to the different committees and provide input. That input often directly results in specific changes to the rules. Many of them also serve on the committee directly and thus have even more of a hands on involvement in the rules.

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Re: 2011-2012 Rules

Post by chalker »

Flavorflav wrote: I have to disagree with this comment, since I doubt that any stock arm I am aware of would be competitive with a custom-build. I suspect that most of them are both too short and too slow to accomplish much of the task and usually costs a lot more than $40.
Competitive is a very relative term. I've interacted with teams that consistently medal at nationals, and treat SO as a year round, varsity level sports, as well as teams at the other end of the spectrum that can't pull together 15 competitors and start looking seriously at the rules just a few weeks prior to the regional competition.

While a stock arm won't be competitive at the national level, for the majority of the regional tournaments and teams it would be more than sufficient to allow them to compete at a reasonable level.

The one I was referring to on Amazon.com (search for "OWI Robotic Arm Edge") costs $37.43 with free shipping. It has a reach of 12.6 inches (~32cm) and lifting capacity of 100g. By my calculations, the arm only needs to reach ~30cm to get to the front edge of the east and west goals. I can't speak to how fast it moves, but the bottom line is that out of the box it would be capable of getting more than half the points in the event, which in my opinion could be considered a competitive, cost effective option for the majority of the something like 6000 teams that compete each year in SO.

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Re: 2011-2012 Rules

Post by aubrey048 »

Primate wrote:First of all, while I like the idea of allowing teams to choose from multiple tasks, the assigned point values don't necessarily correspond to how difficult it is to achieve a task. What I found is that the point ranking meant a task was conceptually harder, but not necessarily any easier to implement.
I actually liked last year's better in its simplicity. There were X tasks, all of which you had to complete to win. Simple. This year there was a large amount of confusion as to how the "choosing the tasks" aspect would work out. And the scoring is odd. There should be more compensation for completing difficult tasks. My school's team entirely skipped the temperature task for this reason.
Primate wrote:All in all, though, this year's Mission was a huge improvement over last year's. And it's by far my favorite event. I'm crossing my fingers for yet another year.
Again, I thought last year's tasks were simpler, more interesting. This year was WICKED hard as far as tasks. That's why I chose not to repeat in the event. :?
But this year teams really rose to the challenge, and I applaud them for it.
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Projected 2011-2012 Events: Anatomy, Microbe Mission, Disease Detectives, Tower, Optics, Helicopter.
Past Events: Anatomy (7th), Helicopter (6th), Mission Possible (1st), Write It Do It (4th, 8th), Ornithology (5th).
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Re: 2011-2012 Rules

Post by illusionist »

I did not participate in Mission Possible last year, but I saw the task list. They were simple, leaving a, what I assume, smaller range of scores. This year's tasks require creative thinking, to find a solution to a problem. This is similar to the real world of science, where you don't have a given set of instructions. I personally loved almost all of this year's tasks. However, they really should be awarded points based on the difficulty to build and implement. Maybe we could somehow award points based on both categories (how to do the task, and actually making it work)?
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Re: 2011-2012 Rules

Post by twototwenty »

Once again agreeing with illusionist, the best part of mission is the variablity in which tasks we can chose to do (so this aspect should be kept, in my opinion). This also means that there is vitrually no limit on how a team could go about doing it and still do well, which is offered in no other building event, including robot arm.
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