0.12 Competition day and the pit

Arriving at the venue and setting up the pit

On event day, the first thing a team meets when it walks into the venue is check-in. The desk where the team registers, the day's schedule and the times are posted at the entrance or in the announcement sent before the event. The schedule changes from event to event, so the first thing to look at when you arrive is that day's own schedule.

After check-in, you go to the spot set aside for your team. This spot is a table and a small area around it. The robot waits here all day, your tools and supplies stay here, the robot is looked after here between two matches, and the judges visit the team here. This area is called the pit.

What goes where in the pit is your decision, but the layout has a purpose. The robot sits on the table in a way you can work on it. Charging batteries are where someone can see them, tools are placed so you find them without searching, and bags and personal things are kept out of the way. When you are called to your match, you need to pick up the robot and take it to the field, and at that moment a tool or battery you have to hunt for in the pit eats up your time.

The pit does not end at your table. The aisle between the tables and the area teams share are also part of the pit area. The behavior and safety rules there are the same as at your table. The event's own layout shows where the area ends.

Someone from the team is in the pit all day. If the team scatters to a match, to the judges or to lunch and nobody is left with the robot and supplies, the charging battery is left unwatched, nobody keeps an eye on a tool lying around, and an official or judge who comes to the pit finds no one. Who stays and when is up to the team to arrange.

Safety rules in the pit, such as safety glasses, closed-toe shoes, tool limits and carrying the robot, are explained in the tournament section of the 0.6 Working safely lesson, so we do not repeat them here.

Once you are set up, you look at the day's schedule. Check-in, robot inspection, practice matches, the judging interview and qualification matches all happen on the same day, at times close to each other. The order of these jobs is not the same at every event; at one event the judging interview may come before robot inspection. That is why you need to follow the schedule as a whole; keeping one time in your head is not enough.

Inspection

Before coming to the competition, you went over the robot with the current checklist; this preparation is explained in the 0.11 From Kickoff to competition lesson. At the event, the officials do the same check this time. You take the robot and the driver devices to the robot check, called inspection, and the inspector looks at the items on the list one by one on the robot.

What the check looks at is concrete. Whether the robot's starting size fits within the allowed limit, whether the battery and cables are secured, whether the main power switch can be reached, and safety-related points such as sharp edges or exposed moving parts. The software version of the control devices is also among the items checked. Which items are checked is written in the season's official list.

If an item does not pass, the inspector tells you what needs to be fixed. You take the robot to the pit, make the fix, then come back for another check. Coming back is normal; not passing inspection the first time does not take the team out of the competition. The robot cannot play a match until inspection is complete, so a requested fix goes ahead of the other jobs waiting in the pit.

Inspection is not an award evaluation. The inspector checks whether the robot follows the rules; they do not score whether the design is good. The judges who evaluate the robot and the team's work meet you in a separate interview, with separate criteria.

The season's official checklist is downloaded from the 0.K Resources and printables page. We do not copy the items here, because the list is published again every season.

The judging interview and pit visits

In the judging interview, the team talks about the work it did during the season. How the robot got to where it is, which tests were done and who the team worked with are the topics of the interview. How to prepare the portfolio and the interview is explained in the 0.11 From Kickoff to competition lesson, and what each award looks for is in the 0.2 Awards and the road to the world championship lesson.

A team giving a memorized presentation and a team explaining its own decisions come across differently in front of the judges. Explaining in your own words why you chose a mechanism, why the first try did not work and what you changed afterward is more convincing than reading the same thing from a script. That is why it helps when everyone who goes into the interview can explain part of the work on their own.

The judges do not just listen; they ask questions. They may ask you to show them a part of the robot, or ask about an alternative to a decision or the team's next step. These questions are not meant to put the team on the spot. They are asked to see that the work you are describing is really yours.

A scheduled interview and a pit visit are different things. The time and place of the interview are on the schedule. In a pit visit, judges come to your pit during the day, look at the robot and ask short questions. Not all of these visits are announced ahead of time. That is why the person staying in the pit needs to be able to explain the robot and the team's work in a few sentences.

The call to your match and getting ready at the field

At most events, the team's first time on the field is a practice match. A practice match does not count toward the rankings, and its result is not added to anyone's score. That is exactly where its value comes from. The robot runs for the first time on a real field, on the real field surface and with the real game pieces. A problem you could not see in the workshop shows up here, and you have time to go back to the pit and fix it before the qualification matches begin. Playing the practice match instead of skipping it makes your first real match the robot's second try.

The matches played after that are called qualification matches. Teams are placed in the rankings at the end of the day by the results of these matches. Which match your team plays in and which alliance it is on are written on the match schedule, and the schedule is on the screens at the venue and wherever the event announces it. What the rankings are used for later in the day is in the 0.14 Alliance selection, playoffs and advancement lesson.

When your turn is getting close, the robot and the driver devices are made ready. The battery is full, the robot is unplugged from the charging cable, the driver device is connected to the robot and the program is open. The team goes to the waiting area next to the field and follows the directions of the field staff. The staff tell you which alliance is on which side and when the robot will be taken onto the field.

Not everyone on the team goes onto the field. The group made up of the drivers who control the robot in the match and the people who go onto the field with them is called the drive team. This team has one person who does not drive the robot, talks to the drivers and handles communication with the officials; this person is called the drive coach. During the match, the drive coach watches the field and the time and tells the drivers what to do and when. How many people can go onto the field, who can be the drive coach and what other roles there are on the team are written in the current Manual. Because these numbers can change from season to season, you reach the current text through 0.K Resources and printables.

Communication with the field staff and the referee goes through one person, the drive coach. When the drivers see a problem during the match, they tell the drive coach, not the referee. If you disagree with a call or have a question about a rule, it is not argued on the field. Events have a separate way to raise questions and challenges: the drive coach uses it after the match, and the referees hear the question there. The name of this process and how it works are written in the current Manual.

When the robot is placed on the field, two things are checked. Where on the field the robot is placed and which way it faces depend on the game rules and the team's plan; a robot placed facing the wrong way goes to the wrong place in the Autonomous period. You also check that the program selected on the driver device is the one you want for that match, because the wrong program wastes the Autonomous period from the start. We do not go into how to use the devices here.

You are not alone on the field. Before the match, you talk with the team on your alliance about who will do what. In this talk you decide how the two robots avoid crashing into each other in Autonomous, how they avoid going to the same target at the same time and where each robot goes at the end of the match.

Maintenance between matches and getting ready for the next match

A robot coming back from a match is not just put down on the table; it is checked first. The drivers know what happened in the match. If the robot failed to make a move, or you heard a noise in a collision, you look for the cause on the robot while it is still fresh in your mind.

The things to check are usually the same: bolts and connections that came loose in a collision, a bent or broken part, a cable that came out of place, and the state of the battery. The battery that comes back from a match does not go into the next match: it is swapped for a full one, and the one that came back goes on the charger. Keeping full and empty batteries in separate places in the pit means nobody has to think about which battery goes to the next match.

The time left before the next match decides what you can change. Tightening a loose bolt takes minutes, but replacing a mechanism means the robot has to be tested again, and there is no room to test in the pit. Squeezing a big change in between matches can turn a working robot into an untested one. If time is short, one option is to go out with a small fix and leave the big change for the end of the day or for the next event.

When the connection between the driver device and the robot drops, the first people to go to are the event's technical staff. Because many robots run at the same time at the competition venue, you are asked to set the robot's wireless setting to match the channel instructions the event gives you and to keep the personal hotspots on the team's phones turned off. You will see how to make this setting when you set up the robot.

Writing a short note about what happened after each match helps you see at the end of the day which problem kept coming back. When you start keeping the same notes for other teams too, you are scouting. Watching other teams, keeping notes and planning with your alliance partner are in the 0.13 Scouting and working with your alliance lesson.

Extras

• Resources and printables
• 2026-27 Competition Manual. The event rules, drive team and inspection sections. It is updated during the season.
• FTC Event Resources. The official inspection checklist and event documents.
• 0.2 Awards and the road to the world championship
• 0.6 Working safely
• 0.11 From Kickoff to competition