On Valentine’s Day, Ben Yee and affiliates hosted a robotics competition at Seymour High School, inviting about 40 teams to compete for a chance to advance to the state championship in two ways: winning the tournament or getting the Excellence Award, an award that is given to a team that is a close competitor for all other awards in the competition. Both awards are highly competitive, with a large and challenging field at every event. The current VEX robotics involves two ways to compete, both factoring into awards consideration: the REGULAR COMPETITION and SKILLS.

REGULAR COMPETITION

The regular competition involves two teams, each consisting of two allied robotics groups, called alliances. Once a match starts, an autonomous period begins, where each team’s robot attempts to score as many points as possible in 15 seconds using code, followed by driver control, where the driver is allowed to control the robot for 1:15 minutes. At the end of both time periods, the team with the most points wins the round. After a certain number of rounds are completed—usually around 5-6 per team—the individual robotics teams select another team to pair with, and finals begin. Finals follow the same format but are elimination rounds; once a team loses a match, it may not proceed to compete in another. After all these matches are finished, the remaining alliance is crowned the winners.

SKILLS

The skills period has two subsets, one involving code and the other involving driver control. Skills has one robot on the field at a time, where the driver (or code) attempts to score as many points as possible in 1:30 minutes with no opposing robot.

On top of performing well at these competitions, teams must have notebooks created documenting their long and arduous process in creating their robot. These notebooks are reviewed, and the team is then interviewed by rounds of judges to evaluate the teams for awards, requiring strong participation from each team member.

With all this, the robotics team 31330D (including Micah Yee, Noah Chambers, Kellan Stanfield, Kaeden Leonard, and Nikita Cox) arrived at the high school at 7 A.M. with hopes of performing strongly alongside the other high school teams. 31330D’s autonomous period code was being worked on, and the other teams worked hard on their robots until all the other teams arrived. The competition began at 9, and though the autonomous period for their team went well in most rounds, they lost 2 out of the 6 rounds, ending in 8th place and losing in the semifinals. Between matches, the team was able to interview 3 rounds of judges, with the last round being the strongest for the team.

While awards were being announced, the team held its breath while helping disassemble various fields in hopes of winning one of the awards. The MP announced the Innovate Award, then the Judges Award, the Design Award, and the Competition Winner Awards. None of these awards (besides the Competition Winner Awards) qualify for the state competition, but the Excellence Award does. The name for the Excellence Award was announced— 31330D. Overjoyed, the team went to claim it and celebrated through Buffet China the following night, eating several plates of food and jello.

The state competition will take place March 13 and 14 at Lucas Oil Stadium, where the 31330D will compete against the top 64 high school teams in the state. Because Indiana can qualify 16 teams for nationals, many awards at the competition will allow their winners to qualify for nationals that did not previously allow teams to qualify for state. The team hopes to have a strong competition across those two days and continues to improve their robot while anticipating the upcoming tournament.