On Nov. 2, Lexington High School VEX robotics team 15797A competed against other local teams at the Belmont Hill VEX V5 Robotics Challenge in the first tournament of the season.

The VEX robotics competition, run by the Robotics Education and Competition Foundation, tasks students with designing and building a robot to partake in a game-based competition. The game and its objectives change every year. Last year, it was soccer-themed; this year, it focuses on scoring rings on stakes. 

Brandon Ni, one of the captains of 15797A and a junior at LHS, described the team’s design process to prepare the robot for the competition. 

“We started designing in mid to late August after the first tournament, which was in the Mall of America. We had a meeting with all the members of 15797A to discuss designs. We watched videos of robots from Mall of America and decided on a robot with an arm on the front,” Ni said.

Although the team had a design in mind prior to the building stage, they adapted to a few challenges that arose along the way.

“Halfway through the build, we realized the arm was out of size, so we had to change it. The arm now goes [out of] the back [of the robot] instead of the front … but it worked out. Our biggest achievement in our robot’s design was making that change, “ Ni said. 

Moreover, they faced a major problem involving the robot’s hood, the part that guides rings onto the stakes accurately and consistently. 

“We designed a motorized hood that needed good compression and correct spacing between the rollers. The ring[s] would often get stuck or wouldn’t have enough friction, causing [them] to fly off,” Tony Sun, a builder on 15797A and junior at LHS, said.

Heading into the tournament, the team aimed to score the autonomous bonus of each match. The autonomous round (auton) occurs at the start of every match and is a 15-second period where the robot performs tasks on the field without input from its driver, solely relying on prewritten code. Winning the autonomous period in numerous matches was an integral part of the team’s success. 

“Our game plan was to focus on autons; the robots that were given specialized instructions that needed to be carried out. Autons were important because they could swing the score by 12 points. Winning [the] auton [gives] you a 12-point lead over the opponent, which is significant since the total score in the competition is usually around 30. Having this lead often means winning the match,” Ni said. 

While at the competition, the team had to troubleshoot unexpected challenges. 

“We were unclear about certain rules, such as whether rings on the stake but touching a bot were scored. We also didn’t fully understand all the details, like double possession. However, we figured out most of the nitty-gritty aspects as we went along,” Ni said. 

Despite not winning the finals, the team was satisfied with their performance. 

“We exceeded our expectations by making it to the finals in our first competition, especially with our driver being new. Seeing the other teams competing also motivated us,” Ni said. 

The team has high hopes for the future and plans on making changes to the robot to ensure success in future competitions and events.

“We’re going to build a new bot in a couple of weeks, [which] we’ve already started designing. [It’s] going to be a much faster robot that we can use, [and] it’ll be more effective in every manner possible,” Joshua Liu, another 15797A captain and junior at LHS, said.