[FTC]: FTC Super-Regionals

[iPenguin]

From Ken's Blog:

This season over 3,000 teams will compete in the FIRST Tech Challenge. If you do the math, that’s over 30,000 students involved in FTC competitions.

This growth is exciting and presents a great opportunity.

An important part of FTC is merit based advancement. In short, teams who are judged and compete at the highest levels advance to the next competition. With 3,000 plus teams, earning your way from a state or regional Championship to the FTC World Championship is a narrow funnel – allowing only two teams per event. In order to make this more equitable and to give teams a chance at more events to continue their journey, FIRST is introducing a new level of competition called FTC Super-Regionals.

Beginning this season, teams in the U.S. will advance from state or regional-level Championships to one of four Super-Regionals, before advancing to the FTC World Championship.

This new tier in the advancement ladder creates a sustainable system for the program’s merit-based qualification system. The Super-Regionals are slated to take place in Northern California, Texas, Iowa and Pennsylvania.




For more information on the Super-Regionals, please visit the Super-Regionals FAQ page.

~Ken Johnson
Director, FIRST Tech Challenge

Ready or not, here they come FTC!

[ehochstein]

Here is the email sent out to FTC Team Leaders:

FTC Teams,

Thanks to the efforts of FIRST volunteers, FTC has seen strong program growth and a new level of competition is needed to give the growing number of teams more opportunities to participate. The introduction of a new advancement tier allows FTC to maintain a sustainable event structure, continue offering merit-based advancement and increase the level of competition.

Beginning in the 2013-2014 season, FTC teams in the United States will advance from state or regional-level Championship Tournaments to one of four Super-Regional Tournaments, before advancing to the FTC World Championship.

The four Super-Regional tournaments will be hosted in Northern California, Texas, Iowa and Pennsylvania. These locations were selected based on timing, accessibility, safety, local support, and resources to execute a strong event.

Super-Regionals are FIRST-endorsed events and are expected to expand outside of the U.S. in the future. Please refer to the Super-Regionals FAQ page for more information.

~The FTC Staff

This is a very interesting change! I will run running two FTC teams this year and mentoring a third. Excited to see how this works out! I'll totally be attending the super regional in Iowa.

$500 registration (if qualified) will not help our checkbook though

[Liberty4All]

I am totally thrilled about this. As an Affiliate Partner for the Greater Los Angeles Region I've been getting a lot of feedback about increasing the competitive level of play and opportunities for teams.

Way to go FTC HQ - I really think you got it right.

And of course, now we get to have a fun, California-themed Super Regional. Nice...

[Madison]

This is going to force us to reevaluate our participation in FTC, as it's likely to interfere with FRC season and will significantly increase our costs.

[Boe]

I cant help but think this is a sort of trial run for frc and is similiar to what FIRST plans for frc's future setup especially considering there will be ~3000 frc teams next year...

[Joe G.]

Like it or not, this is the direction that things have to go in. Championships, for FTC and FRC, can't get much bigger. The simple truth is that championships is going to become harder and harder to get to, and this is a better solution than further cuts to the qualification criteria (If this means that all 3 members of winning regional alliances will quality for these events again, I will be THRILLED.) I would expect FRC to move in a similar direction soon as well.

I think it would be interesting if these "Super Regionals" became combined events much like the World Championship, with FLL, FTC, and FRC represented under the same roof. This would cut travel costs for teams that participate in both, and give these super regionals a championship event feeling.

[iPenguin]

Originally Posted by Joe G.

I think it would be interesting if these "Super Regionals" became combined events much like the World Championship, with FLL, FTC, and FRC represented under the same roof. This would cut travel costs for teams that participate in both, and give these super regionals a championship event feeling.

The problem with all those combined regionals is staffing. There aren't enough volunteers to meet the needed capacity. Plus, some volunteers (like myself) like to volunteer at both FRC and FTC events, and some like to do all three.

The other problem with combined regionals is WiFi traffic. When you have several dozen FRC bots and several dozen FTC bots in the same area, they do not play nice with each other. I know specifically during this past year at the Alamo Regional, they also ran one of their Texas State FTC Tournaments, and there were numerous problems on the field due to a high volume of WiFi traffic.

[maths222]

To throw some numbers at everyone:

At nationals, there are 128 teams, 64 per division. I figure a super-regional will have up to 64 teams, no more. 20-25 teams advancing per super-regional (according to an official blog comment) = 80-100 from super-regionals combined. This year 26 teams were international; I figure the number will only go up for next year.

[pyroslev]

So in Virginia, does this mean teams from West Virginia and North Carolina that hop over the border to our events can't anymore? I know some states have closed borders cause they have enough teams in state already. Wonder how this will affect all that.

[orangemoore]

I am not excited about this because it is going to make it so much harder for my team to have an opportunity to compete that the world championship. Instead of taking 2 two events to get to the world championship it is going to take 3. My team is in Illinois and our competition is November and December so our robot building time frame is severely shortened.

[Joe G.]

Originally Posted by orangemoore

I am not excited about this because it is going to make it so much harder for my team to have an opportunity to compete that the world championship. Instead of taking 2 two events to get to the world championship it is going to take 3. My team is in Illinois and our competition is November and December so our robot building time frame is severely shortened.

It becomes harder to make the world championships every year, on the basis of more teams entering FTC and teams getting better. This will give more teams the opportunity to play elite-level events, and do a better job at selecting those to advance further to the world championship.

[Andrew Schuetze]

Originally Posted by iPenguin

The problem with all those combined regionals is staffing. There aren't enough volunteers to meet the needed capacity. Plus, some volunteers (like myself) like to volunteer at both FRC and FTC events, and some like to do all three.

The other problem with combined regionals is WiFi traffic. When you have several dozen FRC bots and several dozen FTC bots in the same area, they do not play nice with each other. I know specifically during this past year at the Alamo Regional, they also ran one of their Texas State FTC Tournaments, and there were numerous problems on the field due to a high volume of WiFi traffic.

Just wanted to follow up on this post from the early discussion in this thread. Staffing was and is always an issue. We were fortunate at the South Super-Regional to have many FTC heavy hitters from all across the South as well as strong support from the Texas and Oklahoma FTC partners. If you have the time and ability, I urge the FTC community to volunteer at the North, East, and/or West Super-Regional this year as FTC needs your support. Log into VIMS and sign up. I think a link was sent out recently. If I find it, I'll add a new post with just the links. Others who may have the links are welcome to post it before me if able.

In regards to wifi, we learned a lot from the previous three years of running the combined events here in San Antonio. This year was our best year in that regard. We were able to increase the number and types of technology we used to monitor, detect and decrease the amount of wifi traffic in the competition space. Three big efforts included: the use of Fluke meters with directional functionality to quickly locate hotspots, placing FTC fields in a ballroom with a physical wall separating the competition fields from all the FRC and FTC pits as well as the FRC fields, and more FTAs and a one man wifi sniffer supported by web-based monitoring equipment at HQ. The grand total of hotspots detected and shut down during 2 full days of competition was 50! One from a FRC coach in the stands of the FRC field who didn't understand why it was an issue. We also sent out a crack crew of veteran FRC teams to all of the FRC rookies on Thursday, FRC inspection day, to help the rookies understand what "bridge mode" is and how to set up their robot for competition. This would have been caught during FRC robot inspections, but rookies tend to be the last in that line so we wanted to catch that issue sooner rather than later.

End result, this year with more FTC teams and the same number of 64 FRC teams in the space, we ran our two division event without many replays due to technology. We consistently ran 12 matches per hour which averages to 5 minute turns. Not checking FTA post action reports and going from memory, I think our first technology related replay came during the elimination rounds and was due to a faulty joystick.

FRC and FTC can coexist but it takes more volunteers and more technology as well as some prudent logistics to make it work as well as we were able to this season at the Alamo FRC regional / FTC South Super-Regional Championship.

[jcarr]

There are some advantages to this approach, since all members of the winning alliance advance to the World Championship, but this adds tremendous costs to the program. Now we have to travel to the super-regional, probably stay over night, and then we will have only 3 weeks to make plane and hotel reservations for Worlds, if we get in. We will be very unlikely to get enough rooms in one hotel that is close, we will have to pay outrageous last minute airfare, and the $500 entrance fee is clearly inflated, since we throw most of the competitions for free. When you talk about the difference between $250/person advance air fare and $1200/person last minute air fare, on top of the problem of scattering the team among multiple hotels, this has very serious implications for low budget teams.

I suspect that many teams who qualify will not have enough time to raise the funds to travel to Worlds and those that do make it will find their required budet inflated significantly. Some teams have always had to pay those types of fares if their state competition wasn't held until March, but you had the option of competing in earlier state tournaments to lower your travel costs, and even March qualifiers had a full month and a half to arrange travel.

I think that FIRST is missing the point of FTC in that it is a LOW COST robotics program. FTC Teams don't have a lot of resources or need them, unlike the very expensive FRC program. That is largely the secret of its success. FLL is even cheaper and is much more successful. FIRST took a poll about the idea of a super-regional in FTC two years ago and every coach I talked to said they thought it was a horrible idea and said they answered negatively on the poll. I don't know the official results of that poll, but my sample of coaches seemed to be universally opposed - mostly because of price and uncertainty. We will adapt to this change as well as the other expensive changes that FIRST has introduced, but we think the change should be reconsidered.

[Andrew Schuetze]

I don't want to start a debate and I don't have access to coaching poll data. I run an FLL championship and this year we could not send a single winning team to world festival because we were out of the rotation. FLL is so huge championships are only guaranteed to send ONE winning team to World Festival about every two or three years.

I don't think we can compare FLL structures to FTC as nobody would be happy with FTC championships sending only ONE team to World Championship every two or three years..

[Scott_4140]

Basically this comes down to planning. If you believe your team has a reasonable chance of qualifying for your Super-Regional, you should be fundraising for that throughout the season. The same thing applies for the World Championships.

There will be teams that are totally surprised that they qualify. Rookie teams don't know what level of competition to expect. They may end up in the winning alliance and earn a slot at their Super-Regional. They're probably not going to advance to the World Championships. I don't believe there will be very many teams that get surprised twice.

Transportation and lodging at the super regionals shouldn't be killers for teams. Most teams live within driving distance. The ones that are farther out will have the hardest time.

Work with your Affiliate Partners now to find ways to minimize this impact. Maybe help them recruit a new sponsor to help fund teams to the next level. Or focus on the hardship cases. Or set up a surcharge at your state level to help pay down some of these costs. Get involved. Don't wait for someone else to solve the problem.

For Champs, you may need to plan ahead and reserve rooms and flights early. Cancel if you don't make the cut. It's a much smaller hit than paying the last minute prices. None of these problems are insurmountable.

World Championships are not going to get much larger for FTC. They may never get larger. We absolutely don't want to get into the situation that FLL is in. Super-Regionals are the most practical solution they could come up with. Maybe as the program continues to grow, the number of Super-Regionals may increase. This would further reduce advancing teams costs as everything gets closer.

We're victims of our own success.