On February 22, four teams from the Island School Robotics Elements Classes participated in a VEX IQ Challenge robotics competition at Victoria Shanghai Academy. Two teams from the Year 7-8 Elements Class and two teams from the Year 9-11 Class took part. In these Elements Classes, students design, build, test, and document a robotic solution to the current year’s VEX IQ Challenge. This year, the challenge is called Rapid Relay, where students must create a solution for their robots to pass balls between each other, score balls through targets, and clear switches.
There were 31 Teams competing at the VSA competition, with over 200 students creating an impressively noisy atmosphere. Most games are played as an Alliance, so it is imperative that students share tactics and abilities in order to score well. Teams also had the opportunity to complete Driving Challenges (both with Controller and Autonomous). Judges award points for Engineering Notebooks that are compiled while students design and test their Robots.
We didn’t win any awards on the day, but, as pointed out by the students, the experience was most important. All Teams suffered problems and had to overcome adversity during the day, yet all triumphed in learning new strategies and interacting with peers who brought a different set of skills, abilities and ideas.
Adhiraaj ChakI from 7DL said: "Competing with other teams while representing Island School was a great feeling. We were tested under pressure, which helped me understand teamwork in a new way, especially during the little crisis when we had to rewrite the code mid-competition. While we did not win, I believe we had a good chance and our robot performed as planned. I completely agree with Hiroshi Ishiguro: 'Machines may be made of steel and silicon, but the soul of robotics is in the creativity of its creators.' In this case, it applies to the VEX IQ Gen 2 robots we used instead of what he worked on. Overall, I enjoyed this experience and would recommend it to all coding and engineering enthusiasts."
We look forward to hosting a competition here at Island School later in Semester 2 for the second Y7-8 Elements Class of the year, and hope that the rest of the Island School Robotics students benefit and enjoy the visit from competing schools.
