This Saturday Plymouth High School will be hosting the school’s third VEX Robotics Tournament. This year’s tournament has grown from 24 teams to 100 teams and will be the largest VEX Robotics event hosted by PHS ever! Hundreds of students are expected to compete at this year’s event that will kickoff at 9:30 a.m.
PHS Teachers and Robotics Club organizers, Lindsay Moore and Rich Schieber, would like to invite the community to come out and witness two large VEX Robotics Competitions under one roof simultaneously. The 2018 VEX Robotics Competition In the Zone and VEX IQ Challenge Ringmaster competition will be going on at the same time in two separate gymnasiums at Plymouth High School.
53 high school and middle school teams have registered for the In the Zone VEX Robotics Competition and 47 elementary and middle school teams have signed up to battle it out in the VEX IQ Challenge Ringmaster competition. Some of the High Schools registered include Plymouth, Mishawaka, Crown Point, Portage, Valparaiso, Portland, and Indianapolis.
Admission is free of charge to both PHS Robotics Tournaments which will be held in both the varsity and auxiliary gyms. Doors open at 7:00 a.m. for set up. Registration and check-in inspections will occur from 8:00 a.m. to 9:15 a.m. Moore said the first qualifying matches for the VEX Robotics Competition In the Zone will begin between 9:30 a.m. – 9:45 a.m. The championship rounds will start close to 3:00 p.m., lastly the awards ceremony is slated to occur somewhere between 4:30 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. As for the VEX IQ Challenge Ringmaster competition she said the first qualifying matches will begin around 10:00 a.m. Concessions will be available for purchase.
The team which receives the Excellence Award at the VEX Robotics Competition In the Zone will automatically qualify for the State/Regional Championship. The team which is crowned the Robot Skills Winner will automatically qualify for the U. S. CREATE Open Robotics Championship. And the team crowned Tournament Champions will qualify both for the State/Regional Championship and the U. S.
CREATE Open Robotics Championship. More information on both VEX Robotics Competitions can be found below. The text was directly copied and pasted as it appears on the vex.com website.
The VEX Robotics Competition In the Zone is played on a 12’x12’ square field configured as seen above. Two alliances – one “red” and one “blue” – composed of two teams each, compete in matches consisting of a fifteen second autonomous period followed by one minute and forty-five seconds of driver-controlled play.
The object of the game is to attain a higher score than the opposing Alliance by Stacking Cones on Goals, by Scoring Mobile Goals in Goal Zones, by having the Highest Stacks, and by Parking Robots.
There are eighty (80) Cones that can be Stacked on ten (10) Goals [5 per Alliance] during a Match. Some cones begin in designated locations on the field, while others are available to be entered into the field during the Match.
Each Robot (smaller than 18”x18”x18”) begins a match on one of their Alliance Starting Tiles. Each Alliance has three Zones in which they can place their Goals. Alliances earn points for Stacking Cones on Goals, Scoring Mobile Goals in Goal Zones, having the Highest Stacks, and by Parking Robots. A bonus is awarded to the Alliance that has the most total points at the end of the Autonomous Period. More information can be found on this website.
The Game: VEX IQ Challenge Ringmaster is played on a 4’x8’ rectangular field. Two robots compete in the Teamwork Challenge as an alliance in 60-second long teamwork matches, working collaboratively to score points. Teams also compete in two additional challenges; The Robot Skills Challenge, where one robot takes the field to score as many points as possible under driver control; and the Programming Skills Challenge, where one robot scores as many points as possible autonomously, without any driver inputs. The object of the game is to attain the highest score by Scoring Colored Rings on the Floor Goal and on Posts, by having Uniform Posts, by Emptying Starting Pegs, and by Releasing the Bonus Tray.
The Details: There are a total of sixty (60) Rings available as scoring objects in the game. There are seven (7) Posts to score on, one (1) Floor Goal, three (3) Starting Pegs, and one (1) Bonus Tray on the field. More information can be found on this website.
