REC Foundation competitions help students develop life skills that they will use in their academic and professional future. By documenting in the Competition Logbook, students practice project management, time management, brainstorming, as well as effective interpersonal and written communication skills.
The Aerial Drone Competition Logbook should include information on 5 Key areas:
Submitting a Competition Logbook is not a requirement for teams to receive an in-person interview, and all teams at an event will have the opportunity to interview.
Teams may purchase a physical competition logbook or use any one of various computer applications or cloud-based services available for digitally creating and maintaining a digital Competition Logbook. Regardless of the format, all logbooks are evaluated by the Judges according to the same award criteria and rubric. Documentation via logbooks should commence at the first team meeting, and continue through the completion of the season.
All Competition Logbooks should contain these elements:
Using the Design Process, show documentation for Piloting teamwork and Autonomous flight skills matches:
Show documentation for any data gathered that is relevant to your drone, coding, competition. Some examples include:
Share how your team engages in safety when it comes to Drones. Some examples include:
Drone Flight Logs are kept by drone pilots to ensure that they are complying with the rules that apply to them when flying. While this is not required under current FAA regulations, it certainly has enough benefits to make it a worthy idea for documentation. In the Aerial Drone Competition, we encourage teams to keep a flight log and include:
Being part of an Aerial Drone Competition Team is a rewarding and learning experience for students. Share your team and leadership experiences. Suggested topics include:
Outstanding Competition Logbooks should contain these additional elements:
Note: If the Competition Logbook is written in a language that is not common for the region, it is the team’s responsibility to provide the original language version along with a translated copy, if any Judges fluent in the original language are not available. This should be brought to the EP’s attention as early as possible so they can inform the Judge Advisor.
Judges perform a quick scan of all the Competition Logbooks and divide them into two categories: Developing and Fully Developed.
Developing Competition Logbooks contain little detail, will have few drawings, and will not be a complete record of the design process. To save Judges’ time, the Competition Logbook Rubric will not be completed for these teams. However, all Competition Logbooks should be retained until the end of judging deliberations.
If it is unclear whether a logbook should be categorized as Developing or Fully Developed, either another Judge can help make that determination, or the logbook should be given the benefit of the doubt and scored using the rubric.
Fully Developed Competition Logbooks contain great detail, and will include detailed drawings, tests and test results, solutions to problems the team encountered, and can be viewed as a complete record of the design process. Logbook attributes for Fully Developed logbooks will be scored as Emerging, Proficient, and Expert on the Competition Logbook Rubric.
Fully Developed Logbooks will be scored and ranked using the Competition Logbook Rubric. Roughly the top 10 or top 20% of Fully Developed Logbooks, (whichever is greater) will be in consideration for the Excellence and Flight Operations awards. They may be initially ranked according to their rubric scores, then be re-ranked according to further qualitative evaluation by Judges.
Judges should read through each logbook as the rubric is scored. There will likely not be enough time to do a full page-by-page close reading, so Judges should form overall impressions and use focused read-throughs for different criteria to generate an accurate score. If time and personnel permits, two or more Judges may wish to independently score each logbook. Finalist logbooks may be scored by an even larger panel of Judges.