[robocup-small] robocup-small Digest, Vol 145, Issue 3

[Raul Lapeira]

Long mail sorry.

We have some experience here about placement in divisions as we have been
doing it since 2013, some laws we apply for if you want to use them:

(Note our thing is a full year league from Sept to June) http://lnrc.es/

- The preliminary placement in a division for new teams is done with
objective criteria at the beginning of the season: moving speed, strenght,
results in previous tournaments, ... we have several methods to measure
these values numerically.
- Teams in fist division MUST have robots for all the categories (we are
multicategory, but extrapolate it to your 11 robots if you will). If a team
is invited to 1st division but wont be interested in building 3 robots
(humanoid, autonomous car and minisumo) he is left in 2nd division where
requirements are almost none (we call it the "casual" division, it is not
really serious per-se yet, if you want, you compete, you wont or cant...
that is ok). Builders in 1st division can not be missing from any event
(has a negative impact in event production and communication).
- Once in a time (for us in Spain it is December) we analyze the yearly
scoring table and check the worst teams in 1st division and the best in 2nd
division... if there are outliers in results we match them together and
promotion / demotion may occur.

Also... putting teams together and preventing small teams and soloers from
trying to compete is a must if you want to have stable teams... in 2015 we
finally got more than 20 unstable teams / solo builders to come together
and form permanent teams http://lnrc.es/resultado.jsp (click on
"clasificacion" and you will see we only had 4 teams last years when before
we had way more, but with less compromise). This year we have 8 teams in
1st division but all of them are serious ones.

Divisions helped us a LOT to show more professionalism, more compromise but
more importantly faster advances and more engagement with the public as we
can market the team brands more easily to the public. Trying to get
"innovation" before the PRO division here was plainly impossible... full
frontal opposition from many builders, now we have a balance between:

1. Builders willing to innovate and really advance stuff (PRO division)
2. Builders pulling robots from the "fondo de armario" (robots they build
years ago but keep on bringing to competitions without changes) (2nd
division)

It is not that we "despise" the second division because I myself compete in
it... but we were stagnated during 2010-2013 because of the lack of this
structure...

Just a note: This is exactly what is happening with eSports, we just happen
to be 3-5 years behind and working with way less money. Having some help /
interest / support from Robocup SSL could drive the same change in the
whole Robocup movement.
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