DVHS Robotics teams 5776K and 5776E have qualified for the 2024 VEX Robotics World Championship, which will be taking place from April 25 – May 3 in Dallas, Texas.
Each year in spring, a new game is announced for the upcoming year. Robotics teams worldwide then spend the summer building their robot to compete against other robots in the game. This year, the game is called Over Under. The goal is to win more points than the opposing team by scoring triballs in goals and elevating your robot on a bar as high as possible at the end of the match.
This next week leading up to the competition, both teams have a lot of work to do. 5776K and 5776E are redesigning their robots so that they are more suited for the fast-paced aspect of the game. Senior Nakshatr Gupta, a builder on 5776K, noted that throughout the season, they have focused heavily on the versatility of their robot.
“Documenting our design process and making sure that it is very thorough has been a priority for us,” says Gupta, “but now, we’re sort of pushing ourselves to the limit in terms of how tournament-ready we can make our robot and how optimized we can make it for match-play.”
In addition to physically working on the robot, the team members are strongly focused on team bonding to make this final stretch less stressful. On 5776K, the new robot is being built almost entirely by underclassmen, while the upperclassmen are guiding them through the process.
“Us seniors are trying not to touch it as much as possible.” says Senior Dilara Caglar, a programmer on 5776K. “That way, we’re ensuring that the juniors, sophomores and eventually the new freshmen that we’re taking are capable enough and knowledgeable enough to take responsibility of the team next year.”
On 5776E, the build team is primarily working on the design and physical building of the robot, the programming team is coding the robot, and the documentation team is making sure their notebook stays thorough. Despite their designated roles, everybody is lending a hand wherever it is needed.
Despite their worries about their robots’ abilities and the competitiveness at such a high level of competition, both 5776K and 5776E are looking forward to seeing their effort pay off at the championship later this month.
“My favorite part about robotics is actually competing in the tournaments, because it’s a culmination of all the work we do leading up to it,” says sophomore Abhinav Shah, a builder on 5776K. “Just all of our hard work, seeing how it pays off.”
