This month some of our students participated in the VEX IQ Robotics Competition at Brunel University. Aaliah in Upper 4 writes about the experience.
On arriving at Brunel we found our table, got out our robot and made a few adjustments. After a brief talk from the person who was running the competition, we received our timetables. The aim was to score as many points as we could when driving our robot, working together with other random teams. The more cubes that you stacked on cubes and balls you put on cubes in one minute, the more points you got. Every robot had different strengths, for example our robot was very good at moving cubes. There were 10 matches altogether and a table to show where you were in the rankings.
Another way to earn points was through a skill test. These were basically the same as the matches, but you carried them out by yourself and you could do them as many times you wanted. There was also a coding challenge which was, in my opinion, the hardest part of the competition because you had to get the robot perfectly in position for it to work.
The judges visited every team and asked questions such as “what is special about your robot”. After every person had completed ten matches the top 30 teams went through to the final. One of our teams made it to the final rounds. In these there were 15 matches to decide the two teams that were going to the nationals. Sadly, our team did not win but the team that did broke the UK record! There were also prizes for the best video, best booklet and the best of both. Even though we didn’t win we had a fun time and learnt a lot.
We want to thank Ms Percy for taking us and helping us along every step of the way. We have one more competition to go to and hopefully we will qualify for the nationals then.
