Open Challenge

[Tijn van der Zant]

Hi,

In the open challenge sometimes there is a large focus on the slides,
and less on the demonstration. I think that the focus should be on the
demonstration, but it might be difficult to get rid of the slides.
Even if there is a minimum of slides, sometimes there is so much text
on a slides that it is almost a presentation by itself. In the last
years we tried to limit the focus on the ppt slides, with mixed
success. So my question is the following:

How can we structure the open challenge such that the focus is on the
demonstration? Should we, for example, allow only 1 slide with the
team name + website, some team leader/member names, affiliation, robot
name and a maximum of 2 references so that people can still present
the robot and talk about the technology, but since there is no slide
to distract the attention the focus will be on the demonstration?

--Tijn

[Javier Ruiz-del-Solar]

I fully agree with the diagnosis and the proposal.

One or at most two slides should be enough. Focus should be in the demonstration.

------------------------------------------------------------
Prof. Dr. Javier Ruiz-del-Solar
Universidad de Chile
Department of Electrical Engineering
Av. Tupper 2007, 837-0451 Santiago, Chile

Ph. +56-2-978 4207
Fax +56-2-6720162
Email: jru...@ing.uchile.cl
WWW: http://www.cec.uchile.cl/~jruizd

[Luca Iocchi]

Another possibility is to not allow any slide at all and to ask teams
to prepare a one page challenge description to distribute to other
teams. Team leader can still talk to explain the open challenge but
without slides it will be more difficult to talk too much and this
should naturally give more emphasis on the demo.
Moreover other teams have these challenge descriptions that can help
evaluation.
This is how open challenges are performed in the soccer leagues, for
example.

[Javier Ruiz-del-Solar]

May be: 1 slide (team name, affiliation, etc.) + one-page challenge description. Both mandatory.

[Luca Iocchi]

If it is just for one slide, I would remove the necessity of setting
up the video projector
by the team. I mean the OC or some volonteer can take care of showing
the name of the team
currently in the arena.

[Luca Iocchi]

One more thhing about Open Challenge.
Even if we will have two arenas, this test must be performed in a
single session
since all the teams must see all the others.

[Javier Ruiz-del-Solar]

I agree.

[Dirk Holz]

Especially regarding the Q/A after the demo, we should not limit the
number of slides. Slides are definitely a good way to shorten answers,
point out the "scientific value" of the demo etc.

Instead we could modify the scoring to _only_ include the achievements
and advances in the capabilities shown in the demo, e.g., check marks
for capabilities in HRI, manipulation, perception, mapping, navigation
etc.

[Tijn van der Zant]

Hmm, I like both proposals

- no scoring for slides at all
- handing out an a4 paper with 12pt Times New Roman or larger font (we
need a minimum...)

The thing is that if slides are allowed but there is no scoring, then
people come up with crappy slides and you would like to reflect that
in the score, on the other hand, if no slides are allowed this might
confuse the viewer or the presenter gets less points due to lack of
explanation.

Perhaps we can go for the no slides (but inner workings of the robot
can be shown!) and paper handouts.

The second issue, about everybody seeing everything: I agree with the
intention, but time wise this might be a problem. A simple calculation
show that 30+ teams getting 8 minutes = 240 minutes or more. This is 4
hours. Wouldn't it be better if the team leaders have to rate their
own apartment/teams and that we try to lure them with some food and
coffee to watch the other apartment/team?

--TT