High School - Vex Robotics
I was the captain of my high school Vex Robotics Team, a team that made it to Regionals after placing at State.
Our first design had a lot of room for improvement. It was slow to move, took a long time to rise, struggled to pick up bags and keep them on its tray. After each competition we improved our design until our design was effective enough to make it to nationals. Our slow robot meant that it was too heavy for other robots to push over, even when raised up. The slow lift speed led us to focus on removing enemy bags and transferring them to our trough, keeping the lift at the same general height.
​
Photos and video courtesy of a dad who deserves to say "I told you so" because these embarrassing, high-quality 2013 cell phone photos actually came in handy.
 Prototype #1 Eventually, a wider scoop was added, the chassis was redesigned to be smaller and lighter, and the omni-wheels were replaced with mecanum wheels to prevent getting pushed. Our design allowed us to qualify at state and compete at regionals. |  The goal of that years map was to pick up bean bags and place them in our team's trough for points. Our final design focused less on picking up bags than most robots did. Instead, we built a clamp system to pull enemy bags out of their troughs, catch them, use mecanum wheels to strafe sideways, and deposit the bags into our own trough. |
|---|
Final Version
​
Our robot starts off in the back left and is being driven by me, the student in the gray hat.
​
(The video quality improves after a few seconds.)
​
As can be seen at the end of the video, our best tactic was to pull beanbags out of enemy troughs. It was so effective that even with others blocking us, we still managed to remove a large portion of enemy beanbags.