Seven Platte County robotics teams will go up against more than 1,300 other teams at the VEX Robotics World Championship in Dallas, Texas at the end of April.
Platte County High School, Platte City Middle School and Barry Middle School teams recently competed at both the state level, Jefferson City, Mo., and at the national level, Council Bluffs, Iowa.
Out of the seven middle school teams from Missouri qualifying for the world championship, five are from Platte County, including three representing PCMS, 8778X, 8778Y, 8778Z, one Barry school team, 8778A, and one team from St. Therese Catholic School. These teams will join 500 other middle school teams from around the world.
Six Missouri high school teams, including two from PCHS, 9065H and 9065S, will compete against 807 high school teams.
The Platte City Middle School team at the national competition in Iowa.
The VEX robotics program is offered to middle school students, beginning in the seventh grade, and high school students as an extracurricular activity and focuses on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).
Teams are comprised of five to six students and each one must try out prior to the start of the school year. Zach Snodgrass, a PCMS student and member of the 8778Y team, explained that they are given a kit with metal parts, an Allen wrench, gears, bolts and a model of the final build which one must replicate in an allotted time frame.
Barry School’s robotics arena
As the program gets underway in the fall, each member of the team is assigned a job, or multiple jobs, based on personal preference, experience and strengths and part of a collaborative effort. The jobs include team leader, builders, coders, drivers, spotters and an engineering notebook editor, also called note-booker. The notebook manager for Barry team 78877A, Mitchel McBratney, keeps a detailed catalog of the robot building process including “side notes, notations, captions, pictures [and] diagrams.” The notebook also includes screenshots of all code that is written by the coders and is used to operate the robot. Building a robot is a process of trial and error. The teams are constantly redesigning and rebuilding throughout the year to improve the robot’s performance and speed.
Each team brainstorms ideas for the robot design. Robots are built with VEX parts and the functionality is assigned by VEX, which rotates each year from shooting to stacking. For the 2022-2023 school year, robots are built to shoot discs into targets that resemble a frisbee golf target in a 12’ x 12’ square field. Robots must also be programmed to spin rollers mounted on the perimeter walls to land on their respective color to earn points.
During game play, two separate alliances, one red and one blue, go head-to-head to try and score the most points for the win. Several awards are up for grabs at every tournament, but the main awards issued are the Design, Excellence, Tournament Champion and the Tournament Finalist.
At the state competition, which Snodgrass states was “chaotic,” Team 78877A from Barry school won middle school Tournament Champion and PCHS 9065S became high school Tournament Champion. PCMS Team 8778Y took home the Excellence award.
Additional achievements awarded at the state competition:
PCHS Team 9065H - Design Award
Barry Team 78877A - Innovate Award, Skills Champions
Barry Team 78877B - Create Award
PCMS Team 8778W - Build Award
PCMS Team 8778Z - Judges Award
McBratney is “very excited” for the upcoming competition as he and his team work to make adjustments to their robot after receiving updated rules for the World Competition.
As the competition draws near, Snodgrass had one word, “stressed.” His team is “working on perfecting the flywheel, or shooter” and the intake, which picks up the discs.
Each team works with teachers and/or coaches; however, “We are truly just here as mentors,” said Jennifer Morelock, Barry Robotics Coach, “This is all the kids, from designing it, to coming up with ideas, to researching it, that is all them.”