Choosing a Host for RMNA 2026
08/15/2025
The team chosen to host RMNA 2026 is Purdue's BoilerBots. We'll start off with some data:
Survey results (unfiltered, all responses)
​The chart above shows all responses to the Google form, including people who are not current team members. We also ran the numbers this way:
Survey results, giving each team 1 vote based on average ranks by their members
​Here, votes were tallied as 1-vote-per-team, with the “alumni/volunteer/new team/etc” block counting as 1 collective “team”. Within each team, all members' ranked choices are averaged to determine the team-as-a-whole’s ranked choices. An instant-runoff ranked choice vote is then run on the teams.
Other methods we counted votes and tallied the data include: ‘popular vote’, ‘popular vote excluding Alumni/volunteer/other and all 3 hosts’, ‘1-vote-per-team popular-vote-each-team’, all with ranked choice and without. In all cases analyzed Purdue came out on top, although the margin of victory varied. In general the numbers indicate a very close race for the “winner”.
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Onto the reasoning:
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Internally, we were really impressed with the BoilerBots’ bid. The staffing plan, experience with the Midwest Conference, and existing relationships with their university community reduces risk for Boilerbot’s capability to fund, plan, and staff the event.
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The swinging factor between the RHIT and Purdue bids was the popular vote and the cost to the hosting team. While we have no doubt that the Thornbots would be able to raise the funds needed for their venue, we felt that Purdue was the safer bet. We also took the community vote into heavy consideration.
The largest concern with both of our Midwestern bids was the relative difficulty in travelling to both Terre Haute and West Lafayette, being “in the middle of nowhere” Indiana, at least 1 hour away by ground transportation from IND. However, our oldest RoboMasters may recognize this is a similar situation to the College Station - Houston transit time and lack of public transportation. While an important factor, we believe the benefits outweigh the transportation challenges. ​​
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When we factored in how the community voted, a common result to the 2025 vote is that McMaster had lots of 1st choices, but even more 3rd choices, showing a very divided opinion. It remains that travel to Canada for both our US RoboMasters and our US-based equipment adds difficulty for both participants and operations. Additionally, it is significantly more expensive to ship our equipment across a border than to ship it domestically.
Despite the significant effort and support for a RMNA competition hosted in Canada, the majority of students who attend RMNA are from teams located in the US. We opted to prioritize the larger proportion of RMNA students, with increased consideration for those on a US student visa who are not guaranteed return entry to the US. The following data was collected during check-in at RMNA:​
Sum of all team members by country their team is located in (not just team members that attended RMNA 2025)
​Overall, we were impressed by all three bids and appreciate the time and effort each team put into creating them. The community’s passion and dedication to RMNA make this competition possible, and we are grateful for your role in its success year after year!​