Robotics Education & Competition Foundation
Inspiring students, one robot at a time.

2399: Innovate Award Form not Matching Robot


JHAWK
19-Dec-2024

Hello,

The Innovate award states the following:

This design element, strategy, or other attribute is unique or uncommon among Innovate Award submissions at the event

Does the submission actually have to be present at the event to count against another submission being unique or uncommon?

For example, consider the following. Teams 123A and team 456B both submit the same feature for the innovate form in their digital notebook submission 1 week prior to the event. However, at some point in the week leading up to the event, team 456B removes the mechanism they submitted in their innovate form from their robot. (Maybe the mechanism broke, they determined it wasn't strategically viable ect.). Should 456B's submission count against the uniqueness of team 123's submission even if 123A is the only team who actually has said unique mechanism?

Answered by Competition Judging Committee
6-Jan-2025

Hello,

The Innovate award states the following:

> This design element, strategy, or other attribute is unique or uncommon among Innovate Award submissions at the event

Does the submission actually have to be present at the event to count against another submission being unique or uncommon?

We believe this is partially answered by the first criteria of the Innovate Award (Emphasis in bold added for this answer):

"Teams identify a specific section or specific pages in their notebook covering the origin and development of a single design element, strategy, or other attribute that is a key part of their team’s robot design or gameplay that is in use at the event.

In the scenario you present, team 456's submission should not count against the uniqueness/commonality of 123's submission.

It is the intent of these criteria, and the Innovate Award in general, to rewards teams who are actively designing and using innovative solutions and designs. Concordantly, we wish to avoid having teams "block" one another by submitting overly broad Innovate Award features or submitting features that are not in use on their robot.