[FRC Blog] Championship Map Changes and Somebody Wanted This!

FIRST General Forum
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Posted on the FRC Blog, 6/28/18: https://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/frc/blog/2019-cmp-maps-control-system-poster

Championship Map Changes and Somebody Wanted This!

Written by Frank Merrick, 2018 JUN 28.

Championship Map Changes

As most readers of this blog probably know, we assign *FIRST *Robotics Competition teams to a *FIRST *Championship location, Houston or Detroit, based on the location of the team.

We had a special request from Israel regarding their Championship location assignment in 2019. In prior years, we had assigned them to Houston. However, the dates for *FIRST *Championship Houston in 2019 coincide with the Jewish religious holiday of Passover. During Passover, travel for teams from Israel is extremely difficult and adds more cost to the high price they already pay for travel. They asked if we could make an accommodation for them by moving their assignment to Detroit in 2019, returning it to Houston for 2020. Israel has over 1,000 *FIRST *teams across all four programs in their country, and three of the programs send teams to *FIRST *Championship, so this concern extends beyond just *FIRST *Robotics Competition teams.

We reviewed the assignment projections and agreed we could accommodate this request for this one year. As it turns out, *FIRST *LEGO League also wanted to make some additional adjustments to the assignment map, as they had an interest in creating more of a global presence at each location. In the end, all four programs worked together to create the assignment maps you can see for 2019 here and for 2020 here.

When you look at these maps, you will see that Israel is the only country with a significant *FIRST *Robotics Competition team presence that is changing location from their 2018 assignment. Israel uses the District competition model, and we have no plans for changes to the method by which we calculate the number of *FIRST *Championship slots we allocate to Districts. You can find these rules in Section 10.12.3.8 here. You will see that we base the allocation on team counts for the current year. So, right now we can’t say exactly how many *FIRST *Championship slots we will award Israel in 2019. However, based on data we have from 2018, it seems likely they will be awarded fewer slots in 2019 than in 2018. This is part of the trade-off they are making in attending *FIRST *Championship Detroit.

We recognize that the Christian religious holiday of Good Friday also occurs during *FIRST *Championship Houston, and Easter is the day after the conclusion of the Houston event. We also recognize that teams outside of Israel may be affected by the Passover holiday. We are considering ways by which teams for whom this situation presents a very significant challenge may be accommodated. We’ll have more information on this in the fall.

Somebody Wanted This!

https://www.firstinspires.org/sites/default/files/uploads/frc/Blog/2018-frc-control-system-poster-giveaway.jpg

Earlier this month I asked if anyone wanted this. Turns out a bunch of you did! Thanks to everyone who submitted requests. I decided to give it to *FIRST Robotics Competition Team 1189, The Gearheads, from Grosse Pointe, Michigan, USA. In their request, they said they intended to use this as an instructional aid for underserved teams in their area, as well as for themselves. That sounded like a great idea to me, and as they have won District Chairman’s awards the last two years, I’m thinking they can get it done, so we shipped it off. Good luck Gearheads!

Frank

*I did not ship the banana. I ate the banana.

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Missing something?

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maps you can see for 2019 here and for 2020here

Poor New Zealand, looks like they are going to be blasted off the face of the earth sometime between the 2019 and 2020 Championship.

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I don’t think so. New Zealand is fictional, after all.

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https://www.reddit.com/r/MapsWithoutNZ/

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*No Zealand

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Funny thing is New Zealand just got booted from FTC apparently due to a lack of growth however that being the case we should be vaporized in 2019 not 2020.

Also moving NZ from Houston to Detroit is depressing. We have direct flights from NZ to Houston so it’s just added more cost…

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There is definitely a better word to use to describe the move.

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Suggestions welcome.

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Some reading on why the “r-word” is generally considered inappropriate.

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/opinion/sunday/a-word-gone-wrong.html

Even if the word “retard” is thrown around flippantly without conscious negative intentions, it arguably does just as much harm as when the word is directly hurled at someone as an insult. Each time a word like the r-word is used, this perpetuates that the entire concept of disability is derogatory, that disability is a negative quality. Although the r-word has long since been removed from the list of acceptable terminology to refer to cognitive disabilities, we need to remember that it was once a widely accepted disability-related term. The root of the problem with using “retard” as a derogatory word lies not so much in that it’s taken on degrading connotations, but in that it denounces disability as a part of the human experience worthy of respect.

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I’d reckon this is a regional thing. In different countries, words that would generally be considered impolite, offensive, or outright curses can be part of the everyday vernacular. I’ll leave this other example from Australia here (NSFW). When my team was preparing for our trip to Houston, one of the things mentioned at the team meeting was that members should watch what they say even more than usual because Americans can be offended by words that would not be considered offensive in, for example, Israel.

This has been a nice learning experience, now I think we can get back to the main point of the blog. Thank you Frank for making this accommodation for the Israeli teams. Traveling internationally over Passover Seder was very prohibitive to me personally, so I am very glad I will be able to make the trip to Detroit a week later instead.

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Guess I should be reading the NY Times! Missed that one.

Of note usage of the newly coined “r-word” has occurred before on CD without the poster being chastised. Feels great being singled out.

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It wasn’t an effort to single you out. It was an effort to educate the entire community that words matter and provide some background and context as to why the word in question is considered to be offensive. This is a word that I used to use a lot when I was younger, but thanks to explanations like those seen in the above linked articles I’ve learned to try and be better. I know it’s easy to chalk this place up as a dumb robotics website, but I really do think it presents us with some wonderful opportunities for teachable moments. Hopefully this was one of those moments for even just a couple of people.

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I’m so sad. Kalli and I have been planning a trip to NZ for the fall. Guess it’s off now.

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So I’m curious why some bits of Europe are going one way while others are going the other given the few FRC teams that exist in those areas. It seems… silly.

I long for the day when we will all be together again.

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My understanding from the blog is that FLL wanted to make some changes to achieve more of a global presence at each championship.

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Thanks for the links, Karthik.

Way back in the 1980s, I studied the method of retarded potentials as part of an advanced course in electromagnetism. Later as a young engineer in the aerospace industry, I was able to make use of that method to calculate distributions of pulsed energy that might damage aircraft.

As useful as that method was and still is, its name might need to be changed.

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Seriously, I concur. The proposed California partition makes perfect sense next to FIRST’s Dalmatian map. For example, take Croatia (which, OBTW includes Dalmatia). Slovenia to the west, Croatia, and Serbia to the east go to Houston, while Hungary to the north and Bosnia & Harzegovenia to the south go to Detroit. But it’s not just the Balkan peninsula, nor even just Europe that’s Balkanized - Australia is the only populated continent without a line running through it - and they’re going to Houston while New Zealand and Indonesia are going to Detroit.

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I just hope the madness is contained before someone shoots the Archduke. :rolleyes: ::rtm::

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On that note - I highly recommend Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast series and the ones where he explains how WW1 kinda started this giant series of dominoes which has lead to our current day. It’s cool.