Building a robot takes many different disciplines in both engineering and programming. Mechanically, the robot needs to be in peak condition and run as efficiently and powerful as possible. The programming also has to be bug free and easy to control. Finally, the strategy that the team uses has to highlight their strengths in their robot while making sure the other team does not score well. When a team does these three things well, they have a chance to move on to The Vex Robotics World Championship, where the top 600 robots compete.
For the robotics club at Westside, they have tuned their robot to perfection and have qualified for the World Championship on Apr. 17-21 in Anaheim, CA. Since they qualified for World Championship, Alex Zimmerman, Tori Johnson, and Jordan Estee have been preparing their robots for the competition.
Each year, the challenge is different. This year, robots are tasked to place beanbags in an elevated trough while also pulling a switch that empties the other team’s trough.
“The new game is revealed every year at the end of the Worlds Tournament. We generally have around a notebook full of ideas by the time we get home and then [we] build some general concept ideas and decide on the best one,” said Zimmerman.
From then on, the team will compete in competitions almost every week to fine-tune their robots.
“Since we started this season, we have been making our programming more efficient and have been improving how our robot picks up the beanbags,” said club advisor Gregg Ratliff.
Even with a robot that is tuned perfectly, a team cannot be successful without a skilled driver. This takes a lot of practice and knowledge of the controls.
“We have a full [competition] field built down in room 102s and we have just been seting up the field like it will be at Worlds and have been practicing non stop,” said Zimmerman.
Practicing and tuning the robot is important in order to succeed at the level that the team will be competing at.
“By this time in the year, every team has fine-tuned their robots to the point where there is no room for error,” said Ratliff, “every beanbag counts and every move you make can make the difference of how well you do [in the competition].”
Even more crucial to the success of a robotics team is communication. During a robotics competition, there are two rounds. In the first round, teams are randomly paired up with another team to work together to beat another pair of teams. After these rounds, there are finals. In the finals, you stay with the same team for the remainder of the competition. To pick the teams, the top eight teams draft other teams to be on their alliance. Therefore, eight alliances made up of 24 teams total move on to the finals.
There is much scouting and strategy involved when picking an alliance. This decision will determine how powerful an alliance will be going into the finals.
“What we look for are robots that complement our robots strong suits and with members who the rest of the team can get along with well,” said Zimmerman.
This strategy is crucial if Westside is to succeed. Picking alliances is one of the most important decisions you make during the competition. You win and lose with your alliance. To succeed with your alliance members, communication, verbal or non-verbal, is key.
To get to the World Championship, there is little communication barrier. Everyone can speak English so it is easy to communicate your robot’s strengths and weaknesses. When competing in the World Championship, teams face an issue when their alliance member is not fluent in English. Fortunately, Westside does not face this issue.
“The language barrier never effects us. In fact, Westside kids are good at communicating with others,” said Ratliff, “They’ve presented in front of students forever. We never have an issue with that and because of that, and as a result it is an advantage with us.”
Estee, Zimmerman, and Johnson use different methods of communication to succeed with their alliance members.
“Depending on the other teams total knowledge of English, talking is not too bad. If all else fails, pointing and body language can get most points across,” said Zimmerman
Knowing math, science, and programming is not all that is needed to be successful in the World Championship.
“To compete well you have to know how to get along with people, or at least function with them in semi to extremely stressful situations,” said Zimmerman.
Despite Westside excelling socially, there are still interesting cultural aspects that arise during the World Championship.
“The most fun thing is to see Westside students trying to communicate with teams from Saudi Arabia and Japan,” said Ratliff, “You cannot tell that they do not know each other’s language because they are standing next to each other inspecting and pointing at each other’s robots and figuring out the advantages and disadvantages without even knowing each other’s language.”
Here is a video of their robots practicing in their practice arena.
