Science Olympiad Events 2019-2020

[waffletree]

Is this for real? Why would it be posted on the PA website and not soinc?

It doesn't have anything inaccurate that I can see. I would treat the new information as tentatively accurate, I doubt PA would post something wrong.

In other words: Official, but not yet.

It just says "A tentative list of the 2020 events can be downloaded by clicking here (http://www.pascioly.org/files/Events_2020_041619.pdf)."

[Rossyspsce]

What made sumo bots so much pay to win? Like wouldn't you be able to buy an rc car and slap some mods from hardware store materials and call it a day or am I overlooking something?

[builderguy135]

What made sumo bots so much pay to win? Like wouldn't you be able to buy an rc car and slap some mods from hardware store materials and call it a day or am I overlooking something?

Sumo bots is all about finding the strongest, heaviest, most durable, and hardest materials. These things don't come without a thicc price. Sure, you could slap some mods in an RC car, but a rich kid could just buy the strongest motors on some op but sketchy website combined with really expensive wheels and beat you easily, every single time.

Now imagine what nationals would be like. 10 rich kid teams with op sumo bots, 20 teams that aren't so rich but are trying as hard as they can without a good budget, and 30 more teams that just have no idea what they're doing and don't have the budget to compete with the other 30 relatively op teams.

[Maquette]

This was another schedule posted recently for SOSI, which includes all 46 events
https://www.soinc.org/sites/default/fil ... 040319.pdf

[killer225whale]

What made sumo bots so much pay to win? Like wouldn't you be able to buy an rc car and slap some mods from hardware store materials and call it a day or am I overlooking something?

Sumo bots is all about finding the strongest, heaviest, most durable, and hardest materials. These things don't come without a thicc price. Sure, you could slap some mods in an RC car, but a rich kid could just buy the strongest motors on some op but sketchy website combined with really expensive wheels and beat you easily, every single time.

Now imagine what nationals would be like. 10 rich kid teams with op sumo bots, 20 teams that aren't so rich but are trying as hard as they can without a good budget, and 30 more teams that just have no idea what they're doing and don't have the budget to compete with the other 30 relatively op teams.

Not to mention that it's an event that literally encourages damaging/destroying the other team's device.

[JoeyC]

Also, that type of event can get very heated very quickly.....

[ericlepanda]

What made sumo bots so much pay to win? Like wouldn't you be able to buy an rc car and slap some mods from hardware store materials and call it a day or am I overlooking something?

Sumo bots is all about finding the strongest, heaviest, most durable, and hardest materials. These things don't come without a thicc price. Sure, you could slap some mods in an RC car, but a rich kid could just buy the strongest motors on some op but sketchy website combined with really expensive wheels and beat you easily, every single time.

Now imagine what nationals would be like. 10 rich kid teams with op sumo bots, 20 teams that aren't so rich but are trying as hard as they can without a good budget, and 30 more teams that just have no idea what they're doing and don't have the budget to compete with the other 30 relatively op teams.

I think that Sumobots would be a more viable event if it had smaller mass limits and an autonomous requirement. Smaller mass limits (say, 500 grams) would limit the amount spent on motors, sensors, and other electronic components, as smaller motors and batteries cost far less than bigger ones. Additionally, making the sumobots autonomous would shift the event from emphasizing building skills to emphasizing programming/robotics skills, which is an area I feel that Scioly needs. In the past, starter kits for events (endorsed by the soinc website) have costed over $100 (looking at you, hovercraft). If Soinc made sumobots lighter and autonomous, a robot competitive on the national level wouldn’t cost much more than that.

[builderguy135]

What made sumo bots so much pay to win? Like wouldn't you be able to buy an rc car and slap some mods from hardware store materials and call it a day or am I overlooking something?

Sumo bots is all about finding the strongest, heaviest, most durable, and hardest materials. These things don't come without a thicc price. Sure, you could slap some mods in an RC car, but a rich kid could just buy the strongest motors on some op but sketchy website combined with really expensive wheels and beat you easily, every single time.

Now imagine what nationals would be like. 10 rich kid teams with op sumo bots, 20 teams that aren't so rich but are trying as hard as they can without a good budget, and 30 more teams that just have no idea what they're doing and don't have the budget to compete with the other 30 relatively op teams.

I think that Sumobots would be a more viable event if it had smaller mass limits and an autonomous requirement. Smaller mass limits (say, 500 grams) would limit the amount spent on motors, sensors, and other electronic components, as smaller motors and batteries cost far less than bigger ones. Additionally, making the sumobots autonomous would shift the event from emphasizing building skills to emphasizing programming/robotics skills, which is an area I feel that Scioly needs. In the past, starter kits for events (endorsed by the soinc website) have costed over $100 (looking at you, hovercraft). If Soinc made sumobots lighter and autonomous, a robot competitive on the national level wouldn’t cost much more than that.

A robot competitive on the national level would have to go through many prototypes and testing, increasing the cost significantly.

Also, agreed with the starter kits part. I bought the hovercraft kit 2 years ago... it was literally a rip-off. I don't think it worked at all lol. It was 140 dollars iirc but it contained 25 dollars of raw materials. The base was literally a thin foam plate that didn't even fit dimensions.

[ericlepanda]

Sumo bots is all about finding the strongest, heaviest, most durable, and hardest materials. These things don't come without a thicc price. Sure, you could slap some mods in an RC car, but a rich kid could just buy the strongest motors on some op but sketchy website combined with really expensive wheels and beat you easily, every single time.

Now imagine what nationals would be like. 10 rich kid teams with op sumo bots, 20 teams that aren't so rich but are trying as hard as they can without a good budget, and 30 more teams that just have no idea what they're doing and don't have the budget to compete with the other 30 relatively op teams.

I think that Sumobots would be a more viable event if it had smaller mass limits and an autonomous requirement. Smaller mass limits (say, 500 grams) would limit the amount spent on motors, sensors, and other electronic components, as smaller motors and batteries cost far less than bigger ones. Additionally, making the sumobots autonomous would shift the event from emphasizing building skills to emphasizing programming/robotics skills, which is an area I feel that Scioly needs. In the past, starter kits for events (endorsed by the soinc website) have costed over $100 (looking at you, hovercraft). If Soinc made sumobots lighter and autonomous, a robot competitive on the national level wouldn’t cost much more than that.

A robot competitive on the national level would have to go through many prototypes and testing, increasing the cost significantly.

Also, agreed with the starter kits part. I bought the hovercraft kit 2 years ago... it was literally a rip-off. I don't think it worked at all lol. It was 140 dollars iirc but it contained 25 dollars of raw materials. The base was literally a thin foam plate that didn't even fit dimensions.

I agree that to be competitive at nats there would have to be multiple prototypes, but subsequent versions of a sumobot would cost significantly less as previously existing materials could be easily used, unlike events such as boomilever and towers, where testing new versions/designs would require a new build from scratch. However, I don't think the problem with robotic events is the cost of competitiveness at the national level, as I've seen exorbitant amounts of money spent on many different build events in order to perform at nats. Instead, I believe the problem Soinc has with robotic events is the "paywall" to have a device that can even have a chance at competing. I've seen small teams struggle to even be able to compete in events such as robo-cross and robot arm, while any team has the resources to throw a rudimentary bridge together with popsicle sticks or something like that. At times, the competition at a regional level for Robo-cross was basically down to which teams had enough money to be able to impound a device. If sumobots were made smaller, this "paywall" would be far easier to scale.

[JoeyC]

Even in thermo there's a paywall, where the better, more expensive insulating material you could get, the more likely you were to win. Hence the teams who brought devices made of wood and cotton were at around a 10 point disadvantage to those made of insulating foam, or even aerogels. This is the same time of paywall present in most lab and build events. In build events like Wright Stuff if you get the better propeller band (or rubber motor), you'll have a higher chance of winning than the team who literally just got a normal rubber band. However, in those events the materials used only give small advantages, and may not be worth the price; in boomilever there's not much room for a paywall at all once you get to using balsa wood. In sumobots there's just such a high paywall in terms of parts you could buy (because in our hi-tech world, there's always a stronger , smaller motor on the market meant for something like NASA use). In other words, in sumobots the money spent to performance correlation is too high; if you imagined it as a logarthmic graph, the point where money spent begins to no longer make a difference is way higher than that point for other graphs like boomi.