VEX Robotics Competition

On Saturday 28 January, the Girls Robotics team travelled to Barnet to compete in the VEX Robotics competition. With months in the making, they had been constructing their robot during the after-school club on Wednesdays. Every year VEX teams design, build and program robots to compete at the tournament. During the competition, teams participate in qualifying matches where two teams are randomly chosen as alliances competing against two oppositions for the highest team ranking. The premise for this year was to create a robot with a conveyor that could shoot disks or move them into your teams’ goals.

The first event of the day was practice, but unfortunately there was a problem with the cable getting caught in the wheels, which was quickly rectified with a few cable ties. Despite the start being quite slow, spirits were high throughout the morning. The team would all agree that the turning point for the competition was when one student dressed as a duck - the teams mascot - as a sign of good luck. After this monumental moment, everything seemed to get better. After being down by many points, the team’s driver took a swoop of the opponent’s goal to achieve a match win. In a separate match, the team went on to achieve a colossal win... despite losing a wheel.

After qualifying, the girls were placed within the top 15. The next part of the competition entailed teams having to pick an alliance to join. More matches were then played, with the competition turning into a knockout event.

Later, the team reached the quarter finals after a dominating win, 83-12, against a higher-ranking team. But unfortunately, they ended up losing to the eventual runners up of the whole event. Despite this, the team were extremely proud of their top 8 finish. They have made insurmountable progress over the last year and look forward to furthering this at the next competition!

Watch our team in action...