Regarding Multiple Entries from the Same Institution or Related Technical Group
(Updated: January 2, 2022)
1. Principle
Each registered team shall constitute an independent competitive entry. The purpose of this rule is to preserve fair competition, scientific integrity, and meaningful team development, and to prevent a single institution or related technical group from increasing its probability of achieving a higher ranking, award, qualification place, or other competitive benefit by entering multiple substantially similar teams.
2. Related Teams
For the purpose of this rule, teams may be considered related if they are affiliated with the same university, laboratory, company, school, research group, club, mentor group, funding body, or other organization, or if they share substantial technical leadership, development personnel, advisors, robot assets, software repositories, technical documentation, or operational control.
The mere fact that teams are from the same institution does not automatically make them non-independent.
3. Prohibited Duplicate Entries
Related teams may not compete in the same league or division as separate competitive entries where the teams are substantially similar in a way that undermines independent competition.
Relevant factors may include, but are not limited to:
a. substantially identical robots or robot configurations;
b. substantially identical mechanical, electrical, or sensor designs;
c. substantially shared software architecture, codebase, control system, perception stack, localization system, strategy system, or behavior modules;
d. substantially shared Team Description Paper, technical documentation, qualification video, or presentation materials;
e. substantially overlapping team members, operators, technical staff, mentors, or advisors;
f. common development, testing, debugging, or competition operation under the same technical leadership;
g. coordinated strategies intended to improve the collective ranking or qualification probability of the related teams.
4. Permitted Similarities
The following shall not, by themselves, constitute a violation:
a. use of the same permitted commercial robot platform;
b. use of the same standard platform where allowed by the league;
c. use of common sensors, actuators, computing hardware, middleware, open-source libraries, simulation tools, or officially provided starter materials;
d. participation by multiple teams from the same institution, provided that the teams can demonstrate materially independent development, implementation, testing, and technical decision-making.
5. Disclosure Requirement
Teams must disclose, upon registration and upon request by the Technical Committee, any relationship with another team in the same league or division that may be relevant under this rule.
Such disclosure may include shared institutional affiliation, shared laboratories, shared funding, shared advisors, shared robot platforms, shared code repositories, shared technical documents, or shared development resources.
Failure to disclose a relevant relationship may itself be treated as a rule violation.
6. Technical Committee Review
The Technical Committee may review whether related teams are genuinely independent. The review may include technical interviews, robot inspection, code review, repository-history review, comparison of Team Description Papers, review of qualification materials, or requests for written explanations.
The burden is on the teams to demonstrate sufficient independence where the Technical Committee identifies a reasonable concern.
7. Effect on Ranking, Awards, and Qualification
Where the Technical Committee determines that two or more related teams are not sufficiently independent, the Technical Committee and Organizing Committee may treat them as a single competitive entry for ranking, award, qualification, advancement, seeding, or invitation purposes.
Unless otherwise decided by the Technical Committee and Organizing Committee, only the highest-ranked team among the related non-independent teams may remain eligible for awards, qualification, advancement, or official placement.
8. Sanctions
Depending on severity and timing, the Technical Committee and Organizing Committee may impose one or more of the following measures:
a. require the related teams to consolidate into a single entry;
b. deny or revoke registration of one or more teams;
c. place one or more teams in exhibition status;
d. exclude one or more teams from awards, ranking, qualification, or advancement;
e. invalidate results obtained by one or more teams;
f. require forfeiture of matches;
g. disqualify one or more teams.
9. Interpretation
This rule shall be interpreted to prevent duplicate or cloned competitive entries, not to restrict legitimate scientific collaboration, open-source development, shared educational resources, or participation by genuinely independent teams from the same institution.