Received: May 5, 2015...

Hello Skills Ontario Robotics Community

Following a day of unexpected and unwelcome extensive negative experiences I wish to make a clear and concise statement of my core competition philosophy and that on which it is my expectation our competition is based.

In my opinion our core competition philosophy is based on:

·         Requiring teams to design and build a robot capable of completing 100% of the competition task performance aspects.

·         Requiring teams to focus their game strategy on completing the 100% of the assigned task themselves NOT on completing an isolated aspect of the competition task then turning their attention and actions to a focused and deliberate strategy of interfering with their opponent’s opportunity / ability to complete the assigned task.

I offer this for consideration given I never again want to be put in a position where I am facing a team and a supporting teacher that brings to our competition the concept that I can design a robot capable of completing only one of the three identified tasks and then turn my attention to simply interfering with my opponent’s ability to complete the task.

Never again will I tolerate or even remotely entertain a minimal conversation with students or teachers that bring forward this obscene approach to participating in a robot competition that is apparently the norm in other robot competitions but is clearly 100% outside the realm of Fair Play, Respect for Your Opponent and the Primacy of Robot Performance Capabilities within the context of completing 100% of the competition task.

The Skills Ontario / Canada / Worldskills Robotics competition was born out of the Francis Libermann Falcon Knight Robotics Challenge.

The competition was always and remains a competition expected to be conducted in the truest heritage of the ‘Knights of Old’ where Honour and Integrity were the norm.

By this I mean  all competitors are expected to bring an open and honest best effort to complete 100% of the task to the competition.

I also mean that competitors are NOT expected nor is it acceptable for competitors to design or implement strategies based on interfering with their opponents ability to complete the task.

To those students and teachers who perceive negative scoring, by which I mean interfering with your opponent’s ability to complete the task is acceptable, I acknowledge there are some robotic competitions that encourage, reward this perverse / immoral philosophy and to those so inclined I simply say GOOD BYE and wish you success in these alternate competition environments that lie 100% outside my areas of interest.

Bob