In the middle of our robotics meeting last night, Isaac picked up his phone and started vlogging in hebrew for a hebrew project. It was pretty funny listening to his broken hebrew trying to explain what was going on in the meeting, but when I got the classroom notification to write my blog (thank you Mrs. Ho for those), I knew I should write my blog about robotics. If you don’t care - before you click away, leave a comment of your favorite club/activity that no one else really cares about. Ok - now that we got the comment appeal out of the way, I can tell you about robotics.
Our robot from this year…
In VEX Robotics competitions, a team plays 5 or 6 matches over the course of a couple hours to get a record - this determines the ranking for the elimination rounds. Each match is 2 teams vs 2 teams (one red alliance and one blue alliance), so it’s possible to get paired up with a great partner or a terrible partner (sometimes they don't even show up to the match). This randomness is annoying, but to be honest, the best robots can carry their team every time. For the elimination rounds, usually the top 8 teams get to choose their partner from the remaining teams - team #1 gets the first pick, if they don't pick team #2, team #2 picks next and so on. For the past 2 years, our team has gotten picked to play in the elimination rounds, basically we were top 16… The winning alliance from the regional tournament moves onto the state competition.
Last night's meeting was a great representation of a normal build meeting, the 5 of us came up with ideas as we went along, talked, and laughed as we built our robot. Going into my last year, I really wanted to advance from our regional competition to the state competition, but when COVID came, I now doubt we’ll even have a real competition. I find it fun and interesting to design, build, and test the robot, but the lead up to the competition is always the best part - scrambling to finish, practicing driving the robot, and coming up with last minute additions. This year, we are supposed to have a Zoom competition, but I have no idea what that really means, in any event it won't be anything close to an in person competition. Maybe we’ll be able to do something in person, distanced. I’m definitely pushing for it because it’s my last chance...
Wow that's a really cool robot. So, do you guys built it from scratch or from kits? Either way, the final result is super impressive. I used to do something like VEX a few years ago - it was both challenging and fun at the same time.
ReplyDelete