Alongside the teamwork matches, every one of our local events runs a skills field — and it might be the most underrated part of the day.
The two kinds of skills runs
- Driver Skills — your drivers, your robot, the field to yourselves. Score as many points as you can, no partner team.
- Autonomous Coding Skills — same idea, but your robot runs entirely on its program. No driving allowed.
Your best scores combine into your team's skills ranking. It's just your team against the clock, which makes skills the purest test of your robot — and your code.
Why bother?
- It can help you advance. Skills results feed the official World Skills Standings, and championship events can use those standings to fill open spots. It's not a guaranteed ticket — placement and judged awards come first — but real teams really do advance on skills every season.
- It's the best practice there is. A full field, real match conditions, no pressure from a partner match.
- Autonomous is where the awards hide. Far fewer teams run serious autonomous skills — if your programmers put in the work, your team stands out fast.
How to do it at our events
The skills field runs through the day at every local event we host. Swing by between your matches and get your runs in — the volunteers at the skills field will get you queued up. Don't wait until the end of the day, when everyone else remembers it exists too.
Ask your coach how many runs your event allows, then use them all. A skills run you don't take is a score of zero.