What are VEX Robotics challenges?
●Be ready to spend a lot of time building robots and practicing driving skills.
●Problem solve through existing design flaws.
●Spend a lot of time designing, drawing, and writing in your Engineering notebooks
●Learn to code computer programs into the robot
●Spend a lot of time researching and completing STEM projects
During our driving skills practice, you learn to drive the robot on the field. You learn how to score the most points with your partner so strategizing is very important. The challenge this year was to pick up the most hubs and take them to the scoring corners in just one minute. You can stack them to get double the points. And before the minute is over, you can hang or park the robot for extra points. The more points you get, the better chance you have to qualify for State competitions. You can also get a driving skills award.
During our building skills sessions, club members dedicate a lot of time building the robot following instructions from a manual without the help of the teachers. We have to work together to achieve our goal in a limited amount of time. So this is the time to practice our communication and collaboration skills. These sessions help us appreciate what each team member brings to the table.
These sessions help us appreciate what each team member brings to the table. We also record our notes and draw design for new models in our engineering notebooks. Both final products are entered in the competitions and they can qualify us for different awards
Once we master our robot building skills we begin to experiment with our own designs. The better our design, the better we score during Driving Skills, Coding Challenge
Another way to collect more points and qualify for State competitions is to code a computer program into the robot and let the robot run it on its own. So, you place the robot on the field and it “drives” itself. You can program it to pick up hubs and take them to the scoring corners. You can also get a coding award.
As many of you may know, STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math.
As part of our competition we can complete a STEM project for the oportunity to qualify for state and world championships. This year’s focus is Math.
●This project has won our team awards in both regional and state competitions and qualified us to go to the VEX World cChampionship in Kentucky
