VEX Robotics Projects

VEX 2017 - 2018 Robot

This robot was built my first year in high school VEX Robotics with 8 other teammates. The goal of the robot was to pick up heavy/colored cones and then stack the lighter yellow ones on top. Using a motorized fork on the front of the robot, it lifted the heavy cone. Then, with the chained two bars (unfinished in the picture), it would clamp the light cones to place on top of the heavy one. Once it stacked its maximum of 6 lighter cones, it would drive the full stack of cones to the corners of the competition field to get points.

VEX 2018 - 2019 Robot

Completed my second year on my robotics team, this robot picks up disks and stacks them on top of varying pole lengths. It lifts the 9.25in diameter disks using a compact reverse-double four-bar that lifts it over twice its starting height quickly. Each disk is color-coated blue or red so the goal was to flip and stack as many disks to your team's color during the two-minute competition as possible. With efficiency in mind, our fork which slides around the disk on the front of the robot is motorized to turn the disk to the other color without having to lower the disk off the pole.

My third year in VEX Robotics I was a team captain teaching incoming freshman robotics. The robot we built picks up cubes along the field and stacks them within its diagonal ramp using roller-intakes. Then it motorizes the ramp to a vertical position to release the completed cube stack for points.

VEX 2019 - 2020 Robot

All VEX robots must be smaller than 1.5 feet cubed to be competition legal at the start of the match. Once the match begins, then they can expand. To fit our 3.5-foot ramp within that initial size constraint, we made it be start folded in on itself, then be released by rubber bands and a releasing pin connected to a motor.

Wanting to prototype ideas faster, my robotics team decided to incorporate Inventor CAD into our builds. This allowed teams to use an unlimited amount of parts, configurations, work on projects at home, share work, and ensure that everyone has the same vision on the final robot design.

VEX 2020 - 2021 Robot

Built 90% virtually because of Covid-19 and as a team captain for new members, this robot intakes and shoots out balls. The goal was to shoot your team's colored ball into varying hoops for points and take out the opposing team's balls to take away their points. To maximize the robot's utility, it would intake both colored balls through its front. However, by spinning the top gears in different directions, it could either shoot its colored balls into the hoop or eject the opposing team's balls out of its back. This was useful because the driver wouldn't have to stop and run the motors every time he saw a different ball color. Instead, he could leave the ball-intaking motor on while having the robot eject the opposing team's balls.

VEX Scouting Sheet

In competition, VEX Robotics requires teams to partner with another team. Therefore, to win, choosing a good robot to compete alongside is important. Traditionally, to find a partner, teams simply looked at the leaderboard and chose the highest scoring individual robot in order. However, since there are many ways to score points in the competition, I found that the best partner not only had to be individually strong but also create a synergetic alliance by scoring in ways we perhaps couldn’t. Therefore, using a Google form system, I managed my team to record the scores and scoring methods of each robot scored in a match. That data then automatically fed a Google sheet that calculated which robot scored best individually and their scoring method in comparison to every other competing robot in a large matrix. Finally, it combined these scores into finding the best alliance partner for all of our team's robots. On the main dashboard, this sheet told the team which robots, in order, they should pick for an alliance partnership.

Robot Submission

Using one's cellphone, google forms proved to be the fastest and most comfortable way to record every robot's performance. Further, the simplicity of the form allowed recorders to effortlessly watch and record each point.

Optimal Alliance Pairing

This large matrix inputted data from 91 teams and compared each of them against each other which outputted 8,281 comparisons. Using a color-coating system helped identify which teams were optimal for each other visually.

Best Individual Score

Storing the data from the google form, this page calculated how individually great each robot was. Mathematically, it determined each robot's 'worth' to the competition.

View the full project here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fZdvA9A85MKXA8-AEAR7T4LWqs9sLp7gh3fPtb-VknQ/edit?usp=sharing

Teaching: VEX Robotics Camp

During the summer of 2020, I taught graduating 8th graders virtually about VEX Robotics as a teaching assistant to my robotics moderator of four years. As a final project, the campers built the robot on the left together. Then, they were each assigned a cube that they had to program the robot to stack on top of the other cubes. Below is one of the codes one my student made without any prior robotics knowledge.

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