Beginners Guide to Vex Robotics

The very first thing you need to do when you show up on robotics for the first day is to make yourself aware of how the game works. It is a good idea to ask the people who have been doing robotics for longer than you have to explain the basic structure of the game. After you listen to them over explain it, now is a good time to read the rulebook and familiarize yourself with all of the parts and how they interact with each other. It is also a good idea to look at videos of previous years' robots and ask the older students if you can look at their old robots so you can get a better understanding of all of the parts used in context. It should also be noted that no matter how good you think you are at building a robot, you will not be as good as the more experienced team right off the bat.

After you familiarize yourself with everything you should look up videos of people who have already started with this year's competition, because there is always some dude, somewhere in the world who started this year's challenge like 4 months before school started. While it is not a good idea to copy or imitate the early designs, it is a good idea to take their overall concept into consideration when building your own.

Another very important aspect of robotics is journaling. While this may seem like something you have to trudge through, it is absolutely crucial that you have a good notebook as it can be a cause for an award. While in my experience it is absolutely useless in a personal context, the point of robotics is to prepare you for the rigors of an engineering job, where in many cases you are required to keep an in-depth report about all of the tasks you carried out, the mechanics behind individual parts, the steps taken to make your robot successful, the thought process behind your design, and what the individuals working together each accomplished. This journal should be filled out at the end of every robotics day and should consist of what each team member did that day, why they did it, and what they plan to do next time. In more specific terms you should sketch or take a picture of the mechanics of individual parts when they are made, show how they interact with the rest of the robot, show how they are going to be used in context, sketch ideas for the future, show code you plan on or are using to operate said mechanics, and say who made each item.

When you eventually get to start building your robot, always plan out how you are going to attach each component to the base structure. This means that you need to customize your drive base to accommodate the size requirements that are put in place. For example, if you had an arm that had structural supports that were placed on the outside of your robot to give space for an intake on the interior, you would need to take the extra size into account and make your drive base less than the maximum width.

Some other things you need to know is that builders and coders need to leave enough time for drivers to practice before you get to any kind of competition. The biggest mistake a beginner can make is designing an incredible robot with stellar code, showing up at a competition, and then the driver not knowing how to operate it. A simple robot with a good driver is a lot better than a complex efficient robot that you can't drive. You also should not overcomplicate your robot. The simpler the robot, the fewer points of failure there are, which increases consistency. You should also not need to do anything at a competition other than practice driving and compete. You should not need to rebuild, construct, or make any last-minute improvements. This being said, it is sometimes necessary to do something to the robot so you should bring enough pieces necessary to make a minor fix in case the robot breaks during a match. The robot breaking is not always the only problem that can arise. Controllers can break, cortexes can malfunction, batteries can stop working, radios can stop emitting signals, ports can disconnect, the code can bug, wheels and gears can strip, axles can bend, motors can burn out, wires can break, etc. It is important to take all of the problems that can arise into account. To mitigate the effect that these problems have, take extra of the at-risk parts (mostly controllers, wires, cortexes, batteries, wheels, and motors), and take a wire and computer that has all of the code, the ports, the button mechanics, and strategies.

When you are at a competition you need to stay on top of your schedule and bring all of the necessary items. Meeting up with teams before a scheduled team match to plan strategies is essential to success. Another thing you can do is to scout out the teams that you are going to be going up against, to figure out what their weaknesses are, what their strategies might be, and what counter-strategies would be effective. During the final stages of the competition, there is an area where you either get to choose a team or are chosen by a team to compete with. To make sure you get a good pairing, you should go around and make sure all of the teams you want to choose or want to be chosen by are aware of your presence and what you can do for them in the match. The things you need to bring to the competition are your robot, your controller, a backup controller, a connector wire, a backup cortex, a few sizes of backup wires, some spare wheels, axles, and gears, extra motors, a computer with the code, a wire to transfer the code, your own practice board (optional), some spare pieces, your usual tools, an air canister (if you have pistons), compressed air (to clean robot for optimization in final matches), AnD a GoOd AtTiTuDe.

Lastly, robotics is hard even for the experienced pros. You have to be ready to mess up a lot. Everyone makes mistakes and you can't let them slow you down. It takes a lot of time and effort to become a good vex team but when you do, it is one of the most fun and competitive experiences you will have in your academic career.