By Harlan Rose
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After spending nearly a whole school year planning, practicing and tweaking, two of MHS’ VEX Robotics teams competed in the world championship, held from April 23 to 26 at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, Calif. Teams 1973A and 1973B competed in the arts and engineering divisions respectively and while neither team placed, both made it to the semifinals round.
“This is our fourth year competing at the worlds,” said VEX Robotics adviser Timothy Pregana, “I was very confident in this year’s representation of our high school. Our robots were very robust, well designed, we could address a lot of things, concerns or tasks.”
Qualifying for worlds requires time and effort, as only 430 teams out of 10,000 VEX teams worldwide made it to the championship. “To qualify (this year) you had to win a local tournament (that) qualified you for the state tournament and then the winners of the state tournament qualified for the world tournament,” said 1973A Captain Senior Clayton Dailey, “It’s a pretty good accomplishment just to make it there.”
Every year, the VEX tournaments are comprised of different games. This year, the game was called “Toss Up,” in which the teams must score points by using two differently sized balls: a large, plastic beach ball and a five-inch ball called a BuckyBall. “The objective of the game is to get (the balls) over and into a cylinder stash or get them into a goal zone and move them to the goal zone from the hanging zone,” explained Senior Sean Fitzgerald, of team 1973B.
In order to create a robot that could complete all of these tasks, the team members needed to design a robot that was efficient and easy to maneuver. “This year’s robots (were) designed in a manner that can help you score and score game pieces as quickly as possible,” Pregana said. To achieve this goal for the world competition, the teams worked to perfect their robots from the district and state competitions. “We started off with (having the robot do) one task and as the tournaments (and) the qualification tournaments went on, we still built our way through, adding more tasks, (making it) able to do different things and by April we were able to get what we had wanted,” explained Fitzgerald.
Both 1973A and 1973B made it past the qualification rounds, joined an alliance with other teams from around the world and advanced to the semifinals round before being eliminated, after experiencing battery malfunctions in one of the robots. “Part of (the) robot wasn’t working because those robots take two batteries to work, so basically half the robot wasn’t working. So that’s why we lost our third match (in the semifinals),” said Dailey. Nonetheless, both teams’ alliances ranked in the top 20 alliances in the world. In addition, Dailey ranked in the top 30 for “Robot Skills,” a side competition where individuals competed in an adapted version of the Toss Up game. “It’s basically where you have a minute to score the most points you can,” Dailey explained.
After competing in the world tournament, members of the teams feel that many areas can be improved on. “We’ve already been talking about it. (We want to) start early (and) build another spare robot,” Pregana said. Dailey added, “Once you stop improving, if you think your robot’s good, that’s when you start falling because nothing is ever perfect, there’s always something you can make better.”
The game for the 2014-2015 VEX season, called “VEX Skyrise,” has been announced and MHS’ VEX Robotics teams are already in the early planning stages for next year’s competition.
