Wisconsin Robot Combat March 2023

Organizers:

Joseph Betz : josephmbetz@gmail.com

WRC returns for its 6th time since this journey began in May of 2021. Now brace yourselves for one of the biggest antweight events ever held!

Sponsors

This event is proudly supported by the following sponsors:

RFA Engineering - Our biggest sponsor this year has generously covered one of the new WRC arenas. RFA Engineering offers design, development, and simulation services for electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, software engineering, and so much more!

Palm Beach Bots - The one stop shop for all your combat robot related needs! Kits, components, and electronics for your combat robots can all be found here including Fingertech Robotics parts. Palm is providing our biggest prizes for the winners of this competition!

Repeat Robotics - Also providing some of the winner prizes, Repeat Robotics has made a big name for itself in the combat robotics community. Their revolutionary drive systems have completely changed the minimum standard, and it's rare to see something other than Repeat Robotics in the winner's circle of the 1lb class.

Betz Botz - Betz Botz is running a raffle for one of its ready-to-compete NE kits and funding the event where needed! The NE kit is the easiest all-in-one solution to start competing in combat robot competitions.

Midwest Robot Combat Association

This event is the first qualifier of the 2023 MRCA season. Results from this event will count towards your MRCA ranking, and all competiting robots must comply with the MRCA ruleset.

Event Details

Schedule
8:00am-9:30am	Setup and check-in
9:30am-9:45am	Driver's meeting
9:45am-10:00am	Final staging
10:00am-1:00pm	Tournament
1:00pm-1:30pm	Lunch break
1:30pm-7:00pm	Tournament
7:00pm-9:00pm	Awards and event teardown

Location: Crosspoint Community Church in Oconomowoc, WI (lower building)

Spectator fee: Adult $5, 5yrs or younger free (competitors and pitcrew members don't have to worry about this)

Food: There will be food at the event available for purchase. Bring cash!

Bring an extension cord and power strip. Tables and chairs are provided.

Arena

Size: 4' x 4' x 2'

Floor: 1/8" hardboard coated with paint+sand mix

Kickplates: 1/2" UHMW

Windows: 1/4" polycarbonate

Event Flow

I'll be blunt. Running a 64 robot bracket is just as stupid as it sounds. In a field of 64 robots, a 5min cycle time plus 20min repair times would put us at a nearly 12hr event. That's why this event will be utilizing two arenas. This event will also use a queueing system built from Google Sheets that allows for smoother event flow and much stricter time assessment. Our cycle time average needs to be 3.5mins or lower to stay within time.

There are a number of challenges with having two arenas. One of those challenges has to do with volunteers. (I will be sending out a volunteer form at some point, but in the meantime, please email me if you're interested.) While getting six judges might technically be possible if we get a huge excess of people, it's not an effective use of resources to keep the event running smoothly. Up until LR5 of the tournament (assuming a full bracket), only one judge will be assigned to each arena. For LR5 and onwards, three judges will be present for every fight as the tournament will have slowed down a bit.

Upon your fight being called, you should already be at the queuing table, but just in case you're not there, you will have 2mins to show up to the queue table with your robot before we disqualify you. Don't worry; we'll switch to the main microphone and start yelling at you to show up that way if you're nowhere to be found.

While you're waiting at the queue table before your fight, a volunteer will instruct you to start loading in for your fight at some point towards the end of the fight currently running or when a KO happens in that fight. As soon as you and your opponent are ready to go, you'll run your fight. This process will continue throughout the tournament, alternating arenas and staggering fights for as little downtime as possible.

Judges decisions are tricky though, because if everything is running smoothly enough to have <30s of downtime between fights, the judge for each arena won't have enough time to make a decision. This is why the judge's decisions will be called after the next fight. Here is an example of all of this put together.

Arena 1, Commentary: Fight #1 starts

Arena 1: 1:30 into fight

Arena 2: Fight #2 starts loading in

Arena 1, Commentary: Fight #1 ends - unnanounced judge decision

Arena 1: Fight #1 starts loading out

Arena 2, Commentary: Fight #2 starts

Arena 2, Commentary: Fight #2 ends - KO

Arena 1: Fight #3 starts loading in

Commentary: Fight #1 winner announced

Arena 1, Commentary: Fight #3 starts

etc.

Registration