VEX
TEAM 8076 (VRC HS/MS)
Introduction
Quoted from the official Robotics Education & Competition Foundation website:
The VEX Robotics Competition, presented by the Robotics Education & Competition Foundation, is the largest and fastest growing middle school and high school robotics program globally with more than 20,000 teams from 50 countries playing in over 1,700 competitions worldwide. Each year, an exciting engineering challenge is presented in the form of a game. Students, with guidance from their teachers and mentors, build innovative robots and compete year-round.
The competition features a 12’x12′ field and there are two alliances, one red, one blue, made up of two teams each. The object of the game is to score more points than the opposing alliance, through interacting with the field elements using your team’s robot. Every match consists of a 15 second autonomous period, followed by a 1 minute and 45 seconds driver control period. The field elements used in competitions will change every year, which results in an ever-changing game objective which teams have to adapt to. Thus, teams are challenged to apply various STEM concepts to overcome the multitude of problems they will face while attempting to out-perform their competitors.
Background
The Singapore VRC National Championship was introduced as early as 2007, with our club participating since 2011 (Gateway). Despite seeing little success, even with our best efforts, for many years on end, our VEX teams tirelessly persevered on. Our continued efforts finally paid off in early 2020 (Tower Takeover Season), where we attained tournament champions, our first taste of success since the founding of our section. In this particular year, the objective of the game was to stack cubes on top of each other to form “towers”, which gave points corresponding to their height and colour of cubes that make up the tower.
First Taste of Success
Despite clinching the title of tournament champions in 2020, we are still committed to do our best in future competitions and to not be complacent. Our section still has much room for development, especially when considering our many worthy competitors.
Thus, we are thankful for the the invaluable lessons we have learnt in the 2020 season, which we will put to good use. Together with the expansion of our club, the VEX section will continue to fine-tune its operations, especially with regards to the training curriculum, in order to ensure that seniors’ knowledge and experience can be transferred to our juniors, so that they will be able to find their own success.
We hope that one day, we will be able to attain success beyond the national level, and on the international stage. (namely the VEX Robotics World Championship)
Achievements
This year was a momentous one for our school's VEX team. Despite facing traditional powerhouses which we had struggled against in the past, all four of our teams made it into the quarter-finals. Furthermore, against all odds, two of our teams emerged as overall tournament champions.
Achievements:
Tournament Champions
Team 8076B (Trinity) & Team 8076C (Cypher)
Quarterfinalists
Team 8076A (Link) & Team 8076Z (Morpheus)
Design Award
Team 8076B (Trinity)
