Vex Robotics
During junior and senior year of High School, I participated in Vex Robotics. Me and five other boys from my class made a team and joined the club. My roles on the team varied from not only building the robot, but also programming it and keeping documenting our progress in the engineering notebook that I created. I would take the teams ideas and make them into 3D models of the robot before we built them in person so that we could better visualize our plans and make sure that the dimensions of it worked out as planned before we actually began the process of cutting the metal and creating the robot.
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On the right you can see a small selection of screenshots of the CAD models I made over time in robotics.
I often used these 3D CAD models to make build guides for my team, so that way when we got into the workshop and began to build everybody had a guide to work off of and we were all on the same page and could collaborate more easily. These build guides took a lot of time but they kept the team running smoothly and effectively. Here is an example of one of the build guides I created for us, for one of the first prototype robots of the season for our senior year
Junior year had a steep learning curve for our team because it was everyone's first year in robotics except for one individual on our team. When senior year came around, we had a much better idea of what we were doing and did very well at almost all of our competitions, waking away with many awards and many championships. That year we were the State Champions of Wisconsin and we were division finalists at nationals, as well as a worlds qualifier.
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We earned several design awards that year, including the Design award at the State competition, which is a very high honor to receive. The design award is the second highest award given, and is given to the team that judges decide show the best planning, forethought, and design techniques. The judges were very impressed with our engineering notebook and documentation, as well as our ability to plan and divide tasks efficiently across our team. We also won several other awards that year, such as the innovate award and the create award.
Team Outreach
On top of our success as an individual team, we also made sure to always be there for the other teams in our club. There were several freshman teams that needed guidance that we consistently helped out when needed.
We earned several design awards that year, including the Design award at the State competition, which is a very high honor to receive. The design award is the second highest award given, and is given to the team that judges decide show the best planning, forethought, and design techniques. The judges were very impressed with our engineering notebook and documentation, as well as our ability to plan and divide tasks efficiently across our team. We also won several other awards that year, such as the innovate award and the create award.
Additional Post Crescent Articles
Robotics taught me many principles that built a great foundation for my future. From the importance of designing before building to the post documentation like our engineering notebook, the skills I developed have given me a great start to my future.
In robotics I also learned the use of several tools that i never had a need for in the past, and it increased my knowledge of general C programming, and electrical monitoring equipment like oscilloscopes and multi meters, which I only had minor exposure to before high school.