3. Preliminary Round Notes

Note

Everything in this chapter is based on our competition experience and is only for reference. Official rules from the organizer always win.

Flow and Limits

Usually the preliminary round takes one day, but the day is split into morning and afternoon. The morning is mostly teaching robot arm operations. Some parts will be things you already know, and some will be details you may not have noticed. I recommend listening carefully, because it will definitely connect to the afternoon competition. In the afternoon, there is usually some self-practice time. Use that time to practice accuracy and speed strategies with your teammate, discuss clearly, and make sure you can show your best performance and accuracy during the competition.

Preliminary tasks are usually not too hard. They mainly test speed, though accuracy is still required. The allowed error is usually a bit larger than finals. If you follow the course and practice normally, beating other schools should not be too difficult. The hardest part is often losing to your own classmates because of the "at most two teams per school advance" rule.

Preparation

Competition work is usually split into one person controlling arm movement and the controller, and one person operating the software. Before the competition, the hardware person should practice until they can move the arm fairly accurately. Since operating the arm is genuinely not easy, remember to use + and - on the controller for fine adjustment when needed. This also requires cooperation from the software operator. The software person should practice until the software is extremely familiar, ideally knowing what to do next before the screen even appears. Most importantly, the two people should practice together often. Use the self-practice chapters in this textbook, get used to cooperating, and even develop short phrases so communication becomes efficient.

Also, before the competition, you can ask TM Robot, or ask our school teachers, for the schedule. From the course names, you can roughly guess the preliminary task. This trick comes from the 2025 robot arm champion. Seriously, why did I not think of this back then?