Five Rolling Robots' teams were qualified to compete at the VEX Robotics World Championship in Louisville, Kentucky from April 24 to May 1, 2018 (see event info here: VEX World 2018). This was the culmination of a year long season of building, coding, and competing in many local and state robotics events.
All high schools made it to the VEX World Championship. Team 7700R (which consisted of students from Palos Verdes High School, Penninsula High School, Chadwick School, California Academy of Math and Science, and Los Angeles County High School for the Arts) won several tournaments this season, including the prestigious Pan Pacific Championship. They made it to the World Championship after being ranked 12th in the world in Robot Skills. Team 6007X consisted of students from North Hollywood High School, and Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies and ranked 18th in the world. Team 7700S consisted of students from Chadwick School and Palos Verdes High School and ranked 34th in Robot Skills. .
The High school teams did really well considering the tough competition. Each team won more than they lost and team 7700R made it to the elimination rounds as the 7th seed.
Two elementary school teams qualified for the World Championship with Team 7700P ranking 5th in the California State Championship and Team 7700V winning the Design Award in the California State Championship for engineering process.
There were total of 400 elementary level teams at this year's VEX Robotics World Championship. Team 7700V became the highlight of our 2018 World Championship trip when they won the prestigious Think Award, the top award for the use of robotics CODE.
These young coders used the Robot C language to program their robot. One of the unique advanced features they incorporated was a code selector using the led touch sensors and a switch/case logic structure. Not only were they able learn how to make this code work they were able to describe it to a team of judges in a professional way. Great work for a group of 4th and 5th graders.
The Think Award is presented to a team that has developed and effectively used quality programming as part of their strategy to solve the game challenge. The winning team’s members were able to explain their programming process from strategy to syntax.
Key criteria for the Think Award:
- All programming is cleanly written, well documented, and easy to understand.
- Team has explained a clear programming strategy to solve the game challenge.
- Team demonstrates their programming management process, including version history.
- Students understand and explain how they worked together to develop their robot programming.
All teams enjoyed the final ceremonies and the new game announcements. Parents enjoyed seeing the sights of Kentucky as well as the nice team dinners and social gatherings. The World Championship was held just one week before the Kentucky Derby so we were able to enjoy some of the festivities , including balloon glow and dawn at the downs.
Thanks so much to everybody who attended, participated, and showed support. We have some more events and teams' forming coming up in the near future, so stay tuned for more news from the Robot Doc! For now, it's time to sign up Rolling Robots' Summer Camps.
Take the FAST Track to Joining one of our teams this summer!
