Currently, G. Ray Bodley has three robotic teams made up of about fifteen students in grades 9-12. Every April the Robotics Education & Competition (REC) Foundation unveils a new game that robotics teams all over the world compete at for a chance to be a World Champion. Each year students design, construct, and program robots to meet the goal of the VEX competition. Teamwork, perseverance and dedication are all at the heart of the VEX Robotics Competition, while the competitive atmosphere drives students to challenge themselves as they seek to engineer the perfect robot! This is where STEM comes alive.

The competition this year is called In the Zone (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Yo_mlR1VJU) and is played on a 12’x12’ square field. Two alliances – one “red” and one “blue” – composed of two teams each, compete in matches consisting of a fifteen second autonomous period followed by one minute and forty-five seconds of driver controlled play. The object of the game is to attain a higher score than the opposing Alliance by Stacking Cones on Goals, by Scoring Mobile Goals in Goal Zones, by having the Highest Stacks, and by Parking Robots.

Fulton hosted its third annual VEX competition on Saturday, January 27th at the Junior High School. We had 35 teams attend which makes it the biggest competition in New York State outside of the State Competition being held in March at Onondaga Community College. Each year we continue to grow and it seems that the teams that attend love the venue. Fulton did not win its own tournament but had a strong showing by all three of their teams. One team lost in the quarterfinals and the other two lost in the semifinals of the competition. In the future we will be competing at Nottingham High School on February 10th, Rochester Institute of Technology on February 24th, and at OCC on March 11th.

Check out the Raider Robotics webpage and videos.