2019
Judged Awards
The MTI Committee, in partnership with our sponsors, have created technical awards for this tournament: two hardware awards and one software award. None of the standard FTC awards will be given.
Team interviews will be 10 minutes total. This includes time for questions so prepared presentations should be less than 10 minutes . New this year - judging will take place in a separate space, not in the pits as in past years.
Each team will receive a commented rubric from their judges at the end of the tournament. This will provide feedback so that teams will know where they are strong and where improvements can be made. Links to rubrics can be found below.
In order to maximize the time judges have to speak with teams and observe match play, there will be NO review of Engineering Notebooks.
What we are asking teams to provide is a one page flyer (it can be printed on the front and back) that illustrates why your design and robot should be considered for one or both of the MTI Hardware Awards. These focused, carefully thought out, flyers will free up valuable time for our judges so they can learn more about your amazing robots first hand. Please turn these at check in.
Here are a few examples for your reference:
Maryland Tech Invitational 2019 Judged Awards
Triangle Education Foundation K.I.S.S. Award - This award will go to the team that has embraced and demonstrated the K.I.S.S. (Keep It Straightforward and Simple) philosophy when designing their robot. This award celebrates the accessibility and reliability of an elegant mechanical design. This award can be given to a team for their overall design or for a specific component on their robot. The winning team will receive a $500 grant.
Sponsored by Triangle Education Foundation which generously donated funds and valuable time to make this award possible. Triangle Education Foundation’s mission is to provide leadership and resources that help achieve the educational and personal development goals and objectives of the Triangle Fraternity and its members.
WorTech Innovative Sensor Fusion Award - recognizes the team that utilizes sensors and software to enhance automated and driver assisted control. Independent of team competition ranking, this award recognizes the system architecture that combines sensors and software to enable a robot and driver to positively respond to planned and unplanned events during game play. The winning team will receive a $500 grant.
Documentation is required for this award. It will be turned in at team check-in. Find details here:
INNOVATIVE SENSOR FUSION DOCUMENTATION
INNOVATIVE SENSOR FUSION RUBRIC
Sponsored by WorTech Corp who generously donated funds and valuable time to make this award possible. WorTech Corp focuses on information technology engineering services.
goBilda® Hardware Mastery Award - will go to the team that the judges deem to have the most creative and robust hardware solution to this year’s challenge. The team that receives this award really impressed the judges with their engineering process, design and performance on the field. The top team will receive a $500 grant.
Graciously sponsored by goBilda®. goBILDA® is a modern build system designed for engineers, artists, students and makers. It’s metric, lightweight, and has an ever-growing library of parts.
Judges Award - This is an optional award that may be given to a team that the MTI judges would like to recognize for achievements not addressed in the awards listed above.
Match Observation at the MTI
At the Maryland Tech Invitational, part of the judging process is using match performance, specifically reliability, in order to assist in deciding which teams win which awards.
In order to quantify the process of match performance as much as possible, we have match observers collect individual match performance data on every team. The system we used was created by the FTC team Wizards.exe #9794 and consists of four Android phones running an app as well as a spreadsheet.
The Android phones run this application Wizards.exe Rover Ruckus Scouting App
The app stores information about each team in a spreadsheet. At regular intervals, this data is transferred to a master spreadsheet which performs a statistical analysis in order to assist the judges in their decisions. In addition to the quantitative data, qualitative observations were also recorded and taken to the judging room. The data without qualitative observations can be found here:
Individual Team Game Performance Data
THIS DATA WAS COLLECTED BY HUMANS AND IS NOT PERFECT. The Judging panels fully understand that it is NOT perfect. They looked at trends, not specific scoring for specific matches. Not every match was observed, some were observed by two people so were counted twice.
We hope this helps to provide an inside look at the judging process of the Maryland Tech Invitational.