Hello, I hope everyone is well, the reason for my message is as follows:
As the 2020 event in France was canceled, that also affected the participants who were already in the age limit since now they will not be able to participate for 2021 being that there were already teams with their pass to the World Cup which probably have members with the situation that they will not be able to attend for 2021 for the same reason of age, I know that what happened was not their fault, but I would like you to consider in those members who have remained was at the time of starting to reduce the minimum age from 2017 to date, for which I would like to propose that by 2021 the age increase by one year so that all those participants can participate and thus the time and money invested can bear fruit, it should be clarified that not all have the resources to be able to participate in Major category therefore this could be your last time to compete
Just my opinion, but I do NOT think the age limit should be expanded for 2021. Our older kids have graduated and are off to college, they are gone and should be. If they came back and competed making use of college resources, that would not be fair to students graduating in 2021, they would not get a fair chance to win. The class who graduated 2020 can still support a team of younger students. As long as the team has 2 younger students, those teams can compete, though not with the old students as players.
I’d suggest organizers consider exceptions to the rule on a case by case basis, where a student might be just a bit over the age limit and never competed in RCJ before, for example. But kids who have won in past coming back from college to compete, that would not feel right.
Hey Armin,
Let me disagree with you, we all had to suffer because of 2020 and all of the stuff that happened this year. But I think that they should get “one last chance” to compete and say “goodbye” to the RCj… For example in my case we have allready built the robot and are ready to compete and you are saying that we should just throw it all away ?
I dont think that you can “learn” that much in so short time in the college. And if you are competitor or mentor you should know that we can only improve if we are together competing at robocup.
So in my opinion this is the topic which should be discussed by the organizers and I think that they will find a way to resolve this…
Hopefully we will meet next year, since nothing is guaranteed these days.
Stay safe, regards from Austria… :))
Hi Armin
Sorry for disagreeing with you, but in my case this year I’m just going to turn 20 and I’ve already been in university for 3 years
As for what you say, you would not like to have people from the university, therefore in my case it would be to have excluded myself since I was 17 years old and I say I would not be the only case since it depends on each country or the student to enter the university
Hi everyone,
I want to start by sympathizing with everyone who has missed out on their final year of Robocup Junior because of the pandemic. I hope everyone will be able to find more opportunities to keep learning.
I’m not affected by the age limit this year, but I want to share my opinion on the matter. I think that the age limit should not be changed because I think we should give the students who are still in high school as fair a competition as possible. I can imagine that teams would be especially unhappy if they lost to a team composed of college students who have potentially been doing Robocup for over four years.
I also feel that the time and money spent by RobocupJunior alumni is not wasted even if they didn’t get to compete. To quote Dean Kamen, founder of the FIRST robotics competition,
"It’s never been about the robots. We don’t use kids to build robots. We use robots to build kids.”
I don’t think college students need to win a competition for their time and money to have been well spent.
EDIT: My team is competing in lightweight in 2021 so this decision probably won’t directly affect me