VEX Robotics State Championship in St. Cloud This Weekend
ST. CLOUD (WJON News) - Hundreds of students, advisors, and parents are at the River’s Edge Convention Center this weekend for the Minnesota VEX Robotics State Championship.
The high school state tournament runs on Friday, while the middle school tournament runs on Saturday.
Introducing “The St. Cloud Splash”:
The St. Cloud Splash robot, one of the entries from St. Cloud Tech High School, is already a world-ranked machine according to team member Marcus Wade.
Worldwide we are ranked 203 out of over 10,000 teams. We've been going hard, we've been doing really well and won tournaments twice. And we're hoping to make it to finals this tournament right here in St. Cloud, (it’s) like home-field advantage.
The splash robot will be randomly teamed with another robot and face off against another two-robot team with the goal of moving balls from one side of the arena to the other.
Team Member Claudia Schlough explains how the points are scored.
The goal of the game is to get the green and red color tri-balls into the goals on your offensive side. If they're on your side, you get two points. If they're under the goal, you get five. And then, you'll see robots that themselves off the ground. That also gets you points at the end of the match.
In general, one robot moves the tri-balls to the net, while the other works to launch the tri-balls from one end of the area to the other. Team member Drew Scheskie says the biggest design challenge for this year’s robot was the catapult system.
It took a lot of different designs and a lot of different hardships. We had to figure out a way for the piece of metal to hit the tri-ball, like a kind of trebuchet.
The event is open to the public and live-streamed online. For live coverage of the tournament, or instantly updated standings, find the tournament website here.
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