From April 25 to May 3, Lexington High School VEX Robotics teams participated in VEX Worlds, where teams from around the world competed against each other.
VEX Robotics is an organization that hosts robotics competitions worldwide. Each competition consists of qualifiers, eliminations, and skills rounds, where teams compete against each other and the clock.
Brandon Ni, a coder for team 66659A and a sophomore at LHS, recounts the team’s qualification process for Worlds.
“The first step to qualifying worlds is to qualify for regionals. We qualified for regionals off of robot skills, which is a separate event [that isn’t in] the normal tournament bracket. So it’s a combination of your driver skills and your programming skills. And from regionals, we also qualified for Worlds,” Ni said.
The team used Worlds as a learning opportunity for newer team members to practice preparing for an event.
“For Worlds, we didn’t have high hopes of doing well, so we decided to use Worlds as a chance to give the new coders and the new builders more experience. A lot of what we do is focused on upperclassmen because they’re going to be busy or they’re going to [graduate], so we need to prepare the underclassmen to bring the team to success,” Michael Han, a 66659A coder and sophomore said.
While at the competition, the team was able to practice troubleshooting any issues that may have come up.
“Our build sometimes fell apart. After each match, your robot gets banged up, and you have to do all these repairs, or if something’s not working. You have to redesign it or cut new parts and redo the build job,” Ni said
Worlds also allowed team members to interact with and learn from international teams.
“[There were] teams from Thailand, teams from Mexico, and teams from Europe. By meeting these other teams, I got to see what type of programs they were using and the types of planning and notebooks that they were making,” Ni said.
A more experienced team member, Sid Srivatsan, shared a similar takeaway from worlds. He enjoyed the parts of the competition when members of the team had to interact with other teams.
“My favorite part of the competition is alliance selection, as it forces people to branch out and socialize with each other. I also like it because it helps me build relationships within the robotics community,” Srivatsan said.
Han, Srivatsan, and Ni all shared that they felt it was important that they were enjoying themselves.
“On a personal level, robotics is a space where I can express my ideas, somewhere where I feel like my opinion is valuable. I am passionate about robotics because I feel like I’ve become part of a friend group, and I feel that I have a responsibility to them to put in my best effort to help us qualify [for worlds],“ Srivatsan said.
Now the team is reflecting on their performance and looking to the future. Their plans for the next year include moving where they work, and Ni said that the team is looking forward to participating in Worlds again, as well as other competitions.
“Next year, we plan on trying to do better, travel to more competitions, and overall just have more fun as a team,” Ni said.
