IGVC Invitational

[LWakefield]

I think this competition was laid back. It was supposed to rain. There were 16 teams there.

[Raumiester2010]

I agree, it was laid back...

except for the matches where you just come off the field than turn around ad go back into queuing...

[fuzzy1718]

When was this competition annouced? I didn't even hear about it until yesterday.

[IKE]

It was actually a demonstration set up as a short format Competition with 16 teams.

It was a 2 vs. 2 format on an approximately 2/3 scale field with the outpost stations removed. Because of this there were no empty cells, and all supercells were in play during the last 20 seconds . Other notable changes were the field was FRP. No carpet to help you out of pins.

It was set up as a competition to help keep things interesting, but it was extremely laid back. Driver's had to leave due to Church and graduation parties. Sometimes other teams volunteered Human Players and even operators.

The organizers would have to state their purpose, but overall I would say this was more demo than anything else (as opposed to Regional, district, or off season competition).

Overall it was very neat to watch. The elevated floor gave it a sort of Boxing match feel where spectators were right next to the field (occasionally even taking a ball to the face ), and you could really hear the robots working. Thanks to whomever (TARDEC I think) hosted it. It was neat, fun, and an excellent contrast to IGVC.

[Jack Jones]

The organizers would have to state their purpose, but overall I would say this was more demo than anything else (as opposed to Regional, district, or off season competition).

The purpose was to give something back to TARDEC by adding a new level of excitement to IGVC. TARDEC has graciously supported FIRST and now FiM by building the fields and funding the events.

Of course, getting FiM some face time with the universities, defense contractors, the directors of TARDEC, and our political leaders, had a lot to do with our reasons for creating the IGVC Invitational.

Oh, and BTW, we figured the teams would enjoy getting more than 15 more matches with and against each other – for free.

FYI: Scoring sheets attached

[The Cyborg]

I really liked this invitational, it was very neat to sit so close to the field to watch the competition. It was very nice for a demonstration, and especially nice to see 47's new (and unfortunately last ) robot in action. The only problem I had with this event was that there wasn't enough advertising for it. I only heard about this invitational the week before, and it was from one of students from a participating team.
Also, I wasn't there for the finals. Who won?
EDIT: Never mind, just saw the above post (even though it didn't load correctly...hopefully I will get this right). Congratulations teams 245 (Adambots) and 70(More Martians)!

[Ken Leedle]

Originally Posted by IKE

Overall it was very neat to watch. The elevated floor gave it a sort of Boxing match feel where spectators were right next to the field (occasionally even taking a ball to the face ), and you could really hear the robots working. Thanks to whomever (TARDEC I think) hosted it. It was neat, fun, and an excellent contrast to IGVC.

As a leader of UW-Madison's IGVC team, I want to say that I really disliked the setup they had in the main tent at IGVC. While I'm sure that the high school teams involved had a lot of fun, the incredible amount of noise produced by the FIRST competition made it very difficult to give our design presentations and work on our autonomous vehicle. Debugging ten thousand lines of code and calibrating vision and other sensor parameters is difficult enough without people yelling and screaming 50 feet away. I think it would have been a much better setup if the FIRST arena was in the same tent as the FIRST pits and far away from the design presentation tent. I think that the stark contrast between the nature of the competitions makes them ill suited to be held at the same event.

While IGVC may seem lame to those not involved, it is not designed to be a pseudo-spectator sport like FIRST, so it is only interesting to people who are interested in developing autonomous vehicles. I think that the FIRST teams in attendance were in general ungracious and unprofessional to the hundreds of college students who were scrambling to get their vehicles working.

- Ken

[Alex Dinsmoor]

Originally Posted by Ken Leedle

As a leader of UW-Madison's IGVC team, I want to say that I really disliked the setup they had in the main tent at IGVC. While I'm sure that the high school teams involved had a lot of fun, the incredible amount of noise produced by the FIRST competition made it very difficult to give our design presentations and work on our autonomous vehicle. Debugging ten thousand lines of code and calibrating vision and other sensor parameters is difficult enough without people yelling and screaming 50 feet away. I think it would have been a much better setup if the FIRST arena was in the same tent as the FIRST pits and far away from the design presentation tent. I think that the stark contrast between the nature of the competitions makes them ill suited to be held at the same event.

While IGVC may seem lame to those not involved, it is not designed to be a pseudo-spectator sport like FIRST, so it is only interesting to people who are interested in developing autonomous vehicles. I think that the FIRST teams in attendance were in general ungracious and unprofessional to the hundreds of college students who were scrambling to get their vehicles working.

- Ken

Many people from my team felt the same way. Having the field near your "Pits" and presentation tent was hectic for all who attended. I remember getting into the queuing line and practically blocking off one IGVC team from their work area because of the number of teams being queued.

If we have this event next year, maybe they could get a slightly bigger tent for Robofest and FIRST so that we would not be competing for space at an event where we aren't even the main focus. And also as you said, put it far away from the IGVC event.

The only bright side to this cramped space event is that a few of my team members are super excited to participate in IGVC once they get into college.

[pastorellipedro]

Also, at times when the noise level from the FRC field went up, I saw IGVC competitors lifting their heads up from their laptops and shaking their head in frustration because it was very hard for them to concentrate. However, I think that TARDEC inviting FRC teams to come to that event was a really neat thing, as I (and some other people from my team) learned a lot from IGVC teams by walking around the pits and by listening to some presentations.
I agree that next year the events should be separated, as an off-season 'fun-competition' had a negative impact on the IGVC competition.

[Chief Pride]

Originally Posted by Ken Leedle

As a leader of UW-Madison's IGVC team, I want to say that I really disliked the setup they had in the main tent at IGVC. While I'm sure that the high school teams involved had a lot of fun, the incredible amount of noise produced by the FIRST competition made it very difficult to give our design presentations and work on our autonomous vehicle. Debugging ten thousand lines of code and calibrating vision and other sensor parameters is difficult enough without people yelling and screaming 50 feet away. I think it would have been a much better setup if the FIRST arena was in the same tent as the FIRST pits and far away from the design presentation tent. I think that the stark contrast between the nature of the competitions makes them ill suited to be held at the same event.

While IGVC may seem lame to those not involved, it is not designed to be a pseudo-spectator sport like FIRST, so it is only interesting to people who are interested in developing autonomous vehicles. I think that the FIRST teams in attendance were in general ungracious and unprofessional to the hundreds of college students who were scrambling to get their vehicles working.

- Ken

While I have to agree that probably most of the time the FRC field was being a little loud, I couldn't help but feel unwelcome from the IGVC teams, right from the very beginning.

Even as the field was coming out of the trailer it seemed as though people were not very open minded to the idea of sharing their tent, presumably because they had a preconceived notion that we would be loud, obnoxious, and irritating. While we may have been I think that alot of this is being a little exaggerated.

I went around quite a few times to look at IGVC robots, as I was pretty interested, and tried to ask a few questions, however all of the teams did not seem very willing to answer questions about the robot, or for the most part even acknowledge my existence.

The whole reason of this competition was to "inter-mingle" I did my part, as well as a few on my team, or well, at least we tried to. I didn't see one college team member come to the FRC pits, to even look around.

[JackN]

Originally Posted by Chief Pride

The whole reason of this competition was to "inter-mingle" I did my part, as well as a few on my team, or well, at least we tried to. I didn't see one college team member come to the FRC pits, to even look around.

One member of the team from U of T-Austin who was also a mentor on team 2158, whose name I never caught, came and talked to 494 and 70 about their robots, I am sure he talked to other teams as well.

The idea of having a competition like IGVC and mixing it with a FIRST event seems risky. The two competions are on opposite ends of the energy scale. The IGVC is designed to be a mental and technical challenge while FRC is designed to be a spectator sport.

I really enjoyed the IGVC competition. This game was a blast 2 v 2 and I would be interested to see this format expanded. Inviting the top 20 teams and having them go at the game made all the matches very competitive. I would love to see FiM return to the even next year since I bet most of the problems can be worked out by the smart people involved with TARDEC and FiM.

[Alex Dinsmoor]

Originally Posted by JackN

I really enjoyed the IGVC competition. This game was a blast 2 v 2 and I would be interested to see this format expanded. Inviting the top 20 teams and having them go at the game made all the matches very competitive. I would love to see FiM return to the even next year since I bet most of the problems can be worked out by the smart people involved with TARDEC and FiM.

Looking back at how well FiM handled everything this year, I have a feeling that this event will be back next year, better and more IGVC-friendly than ever before!

[lynca]

Originally Posted by Chief Pride

The whole reason of this competition was to "inter-mingle" I did my part, as well as a few on my team, or well, at least we tried to. I didn't see one college team member come to the FRC pits, to even look around.

I know of many FRC alumni who now participate in IGVC. They are all very enthusiastic about IGVC and FRC ! I would imagine most teams' IGVC robot was not working so they had little time to mingle with FIRST teams.

I think its great that they put together FIRST off-season with IGVC. They will most likely do a better job sharing the space next year.

[Richard McClellan]

Originally Posted by JackN

One member of the team from U of T-Austin who was also a mentor on team 2158, whose name I never caught, came and talked to 494 and 70 about their robots, I am sure he talked to other teams as well.

The member of the UT Austin team that you refer to was actually me! I definitely enjoyed the opportunity to see the top 20 teams in Michigan, though I agree with some of the other posts that it was difficult to find time to check out the FRC teams, because we were very busy working on our robot. I still managed to find a few hours during the weekend to go and see all of the robots in the tent, and watch a few matches, though I didn't have time to keep track of how the teams were actually doing in the scrimmage, but that was okay.

The demonstration would have been better if the IGVC officials had done a better job introducing the competition more formally. Most of the college students there were not very familiar with FIRST, so I'm sure it seemed like the scrimmage was nothing but an invasion of space. On Monday morning at the opening ceremony, they did introduce it by saying they hoped everyone had gotten a chance to see it, but by that point, the FRC scrimmage was over and all the teams had gone home.

Overall, I was very impressed with every robot there, all having strong scoring mechanisms, many with crab drive, and most of all, seemed very reliable. It makes sense since it was an invitational to the top teams, but it was still impressive.