For the Academic Year 2024-25, the MUIDS Robotics Club was able to register for our first VEX V5 Robotics Competition, specifically as a first-year team competing in the National Qualifiers & Scrimmage for the VEX V5 High Stakes Tournament in Thailand.

The VEX V5 Competition is one of the most popular International Robotics Competitions. It follows a structure of Practices, Qualifiers, Nationals, & Worlds. Specifically, this competition is against teams consisting of Middle Schoolers & High Schoolers. The specific gameplay, regulations/rules, & field change each year making each unique & challenging.

Initially, though the rules & announcement were released in April 2024, my team was unable to get to the Field & needed equipment (including sensors, gussets, & a pneumatics kit) until the next Academic Year in October 2024. Because of this, our team was initially far behind the other schools & teams in terms of development. Furthermore, we sat idly instead of understanding the rules, experimenting, programming, & practicing. We also didn't fully understand the competition itself initially. For example, to achieve the Excellence Award, you need to have a physical notebook printed & submitted. Also, the notebook was much more important than we initially believed, considered very important for most awards & for judging & other criteria.

For this year's game, we were expected to build a robot that would grab, receive, & "score" colored rings into mobile goal stakes. We were tasked with designing the robot from its base to its intricate details, & programming also needed to be written. Additionally, there would be a structure to climb & wall stakes for additional points, both requiring arms to be built & engineered, which our team could not do due to limited resources/supplies & time constraints.

For the first two months, up till our first competition, a practice tournament, in December, we built a cubic robot that was barely functional & impressively clunky, destructive, & honestly useless. We were not able to score almost any points during the tournament.

However, we were able to win the December National Qualifier Tournament, as the top Alliance (there were 4 total teams)  chose us as their Alliance partner. After this tournament, we used inspirations & findings from the event, especially from other teams & the university teams.

For example, one particular innovation was our modified feeder system which used two omni-wheels & a conveyor with rubber flaps around two 30T gears attached to another conveyor system which controlled the movement via a motor. Another innovation was how we were able to make the robot more compact, pre-loaded, & extendable by extending the feeder system to a bit under the maximum extended length limit (24 inches). Then, by adding movable & foldable arms, we were able to raise & compress the arm to attach to the top conveyor tooth. This proved instrumental to our fixes & winning the Judges Award later on.

In January, we participated in the Thailand National VEX V5 High Stakes Tournament, a direct qualification event for VEX V5 Worlds. Due to numerous environmental mishaps & unfortunate events such as connection issues, robot freezing, & even referees showing us the wrong score & changing it from what they showed us without notifying everyone. We lost all qualifying matches, had conflicting schedules, & lost it in terms of team morale. The team thought it was manipulated & unfair. Those who spent many hours, days, & weeks (even weekends & breaks) on the robot, like myself & other department heads, broke down. We left after qualifying not even finishing the event, desperate to escape the horrific event. It was the lowest point for us this year, especially myself. I was probably impacted the hardest & fell into major depression, feeling the world was against me & everything that I did for the club & competition was for nothing.

Moving to the last event, the team worked tirelessly to fix our problems, fix the autonomous code, practice, & improve to get a better placement. When we arrived at the event during the inspection, we were told that our robot was barely over the limit & was given a decent amount of time to rectify it. The organizers were very nice, specific, & straightforward, which helped with team morale & made it the team's more memorable & favorite event.

Due to the modifications we had to make, the robot broke a lot during practice & qualifying, & the team couldn't rectify all the problems until noon, which was sadly too late for us to escape last place. However, this time, the team was motivated & energized, & so we persevered to the end of the event. We were able to win our last qualifying match, winning two out of twelve times in total, which helped us end on a high & raised morale. Afterward, we were interviewed by a Judge about the robot, our innovations, & work in general throughout the year.  Everyone in the team spoke a bit & we tried to go into as much detail as possible; highlighting problems, innovations, challenges, roles, & other information. In the end, that interview helped us win the Judges Awards, which boosted morale & helped the team feel refreshed, content, & honestly overjoyed.

For future members of the team & any interested VEX V5 team or participant to help them understand basic rules, roles, tips, resources, & other information & details.