During the Middle School Robotics in-house competition on February 3, Team 6199Y held its robot’s base together with zip-ties and only had one working wheel. The members scrambled to create something that could perform. They accepted that they would not be able to win. Yet, they persevered and gave their best effort.
This is the problem-solving and persistence that the Middle School Robotics program teaches. The program, one of our official academic teams, uses the engineering design process, where students identify a problem, brainstorm ideas to solve it, test design ideas, and refine the design until it works. Team members practice the engineering design process by competing in VEX V5 tournaments.
To allow newer students to learn the process, the program is split into the Green and White Teams. The White Team consists of the students who have just entered the robotics program and need to learn how to make and program a robot. Students spend one year in the White Team before moving up to the five Green Teams, lettered A-E, where they can compete in the VEX V5 tournaments. This progression gives new members the chance to learn the basics of building a robot without the pressures of multiple competitions.
Because students developed their robots from scratch, their original designs often went awry. 6199-B inverted its controllers, and 6199C’s robot’s base malfunctioned. However, the teams were able to fix the problems or persevere despite them.
Each year, VEX V5 uses a new game in its competitions. This year’s competition is called Push Back, and the game involves the robot picking up blocks and putting them into “goals.”
The first phase of the competition is a round robin of qualification matches where each team has six matches and allies with another random team for each of their matches. Then, officials draw up rankings based on teams’ win-loss records.
After the rankings are announced, each team gets to pick their alliance partner for the rest of the competition. The first-place team selects their partner—usually the second-place team—and it goes down the rankings from there.
Robotics tournaments do not just reward teams based on bracket results. During a tournament, there’s a separate competition area called the skills field where one team goes up against the clock to get as many points as possible.
Moreover, at the end of each competition, a panel of judges hands out multiple awards. This season, Westminster’s Robotics program won the Innovate Award and the Judges Award. The Innovate Award commends a specific element of a robot that its team designed, and judges decide on the recipient by looking through the Engineering Notebooks teams have kept all season for the most creative solutions.
The Judges Award recognizes traits that a team shows during an interview at the start of a tournament, such as effective communication skills, teamwork, and professionalism.
Throughout the long season, perhaps the most growth occurs during the Middle School Robotics in-house competition, which occurs each February. In this contest, five Green teams and a few teams made up of White Team members compete against each other. This year, teams 6199Y and 6199Z represented the White Team.
The in-house competition is shorter than a regular tournament. Instead of each team having six qualification matches, each team only has two or three matches. Additionally, instead of a playoff bracket, there is only a final match based on rankings and alliance choosing.
The teamwork in the in-house competition was a showcase of the regular season’s success. 7th grader Liam Lee, a member of 6199D, said his group was successful during the season because they decided to focus on teamwork. “[We] needed to not have one person dominate the workload, so we assigned roles like any team would do,” he says. “Then we [had] people help out with other roles as well.
“We also tried to work on time management, so we had a structure and schedule on what to work on, code, build, design, [and note down],” Lee adds. “We’ve [also] watched clips of better teams in the high school, and then we tried to implement that into our strategy as a team.”
Robotics coach Timothy Shabanowitz says that rankings, results, and awards aren’t the best thing a member takes away from a competition or season. “If you’re just looking at hardware, you’re missing the point,” he says. “[The 8th graders] are going to be ready for 9th grade and how Upper School Robotics works…Our 7th-grade teams that did well this year…they know what to expect, and they’ll be ready to hit the ground running for next year.”
Next year, the number of teams Westminster has will shift from five to four. According to Shabanowitz, this change will have an impact on the way the program is run. “We’ll have to make cuts,” he says. “But we will still want to give an opportunity for those that are cut to participate.
“It’s probably going to be better for us because we’ll be able to educate students that are extremely dedicated,” Shabanowitz adds. “The students that are here just one practice every two weeks, they can go do what they want to do, whether that’s soccer practice or swimming.”