ISO 29110: A Robot Competition Case Study

This paper evaluates the implementation of the ISO/IEC 29110 standard in an educational robotics competition involving high environmental uncertainty. Five teams, acting as Very Small Entities (VSEs), were tasked with autonomous maze navigation using the Maqueen platform without prior technical requirements or maps. A mixed-methods approach correlated software lifecycle adherence with hardware performance. Results show that structured engineering processes optimized performance, achieving a record completion time of 30 seconds. Statistical analysis revealed a”very large” effect size (Cohen’s d > 2.4) in the perception of software architecture and quality assurance, indicating that standardization is a critical tool for managing technical uncertainty in VSEs.