Competitions explained
Buzz Robotics is starting competition season! Build season has ended and the
team is getting ready to compete at our events. On March 9 th , we just went to Wilby
High School in Waterbury for our first District Event.
A competition has essentially three parts: scouting, driving, and robot repair.
In a match, there are two alliances: red and blue, and each alliance has three teams.
The three teams
work together to
try and beat the
opposing alliance
by scoring more
points. Whichever
alliance has collec-
tively scored more
points is the win-
ner of the match,
and the ranking of
each teams’ robot
depends on how many points they score individually, regardless if the alliance won
or lost the match. Alliance selection is when the top 8 teams get called out, and they
each get to select two teams to compete with them in an alliance in the playoffs.
Teams select alliances based on which robots will make their alliance most effective.
For example, if a team excels at hatch panels, they may want to pick a team that ex-
cels at cargo or defense so the alliance can cover as many bases as possible during a
match.
Scouting is when we look at other teams and their robots to get a good under-
standing of what they are capable of, and how favorable they would be to us in alli-
ance selection. Scouting lets us efficiently plan our match strategy going off our alli-
ance’s capabilities. In qualification matches, teams are randomly divided into alli-
ances to demonstrate their skills.
Issue 5: May 19, 2019
PAGE 3