Bytemarks

The VEX competition is a relatively new program in Hawaii. It’s an intermediary program between the Lego League and First Robotics and offers it participants continued involvement with robotics initiated first by Lego League and building up to the more rigorous First Robotics competition. This competition took place this past weekend at the Honolulu Convention Center featured teams from Hawaii, China and the Mainland. The VEX robots are constructed using standard materials that  conform to a specific size. Each design can be customized by each team although the materials used must strictly adhere to the program rules.

The goal for the robot is to grab these cubes and drop them into the clear shoot. Points are distributed based on how many cubes you drop in a shoot and which teams cube is on the top of the shoot. Robots are not supposed to bump opponents from trying to make the drop but because of the close quarters it almost unavoidable.

The bouts are fast, only lasting a few minutes. If you watch this video you can see how the robot picks up 3 cubes and proceeds to drop them into each shoot. There’s a lot of design that goes into picking up, holding and then dropping the cubes. In this match the Hong Kong team was challenging McKinley High School in yellow. McKinley lost this round by just one point. Here are some of the photos from the event.