Vex EDR 2015 Season Week 2

The second week of WMS robotics club was very productive and we also added another team. The students completed work on their initial robot builds and moved on to designing modifications. All of the teams also spent some time practicing driving their robots. The students seemed much more comfortable then they did last week.

Robotics Club Practice

Most of Monday’s practice was spent completing the teams initial robots. The purpose of this exercise was to familiarize the students with constructing robots using the Vex EDR system. Building is an important aspect of all robotics, and this also ensured that all of the teams would have a working robot for next week’s competition.

All of the teams ran in to snags while building and had a chance to begin to hone their troubleshooting skills. Team 5794B had a number of problems and ended up having to replace many of their robot’s parts. This is part of the fun!

Robotics Driving and Modifying

Thursday’s practice was a lot more exciting for me and most of the students. I have set the teams up with a team leader who is responsible for managing their team. I tasked the teams with dividing their time up with designing, modifying, driving practice, and installation of RobotC on their laptops.

The teams got to work on sketching their ideas and building their modifications. We have a very limited number of parts so students quickly realized the boundaries they needed to work within. I was particularly impressed with team 5794C’s simple modification that allowed them to score consistently within the rules. They only used three parts!

Additional Robotics Club Team

We had enough students that I felt it was time to add another team. I asked for volunteers to start the team and made sure they knew they would have their work cut out for them with our first competition next week. I was very happy that four of the students rose to the challenge.

Team 5794D

• Zoe W. – Captain
• Anthony R.
• Levi F.
• Emily S.

Whats Next for the Robotics Club

Next week is our first league competition. We will also have two practices. I expect to see teams continue with design and modification, driving practice, and beginning to program. Due to problems installing RobotC on student laptops, we will be issued laptops for our classroom that already have the software installed. It is going to be an exciting week!