DBS VEX Robotics Teams in the World Championships in Dallas, USA

Last week 8 of our Prep and Senior Students travelled to Dallas, Texas USA with Mrs Hall and Mr Dunphy to compete in the VEX VIQRC Robotics World Championships. 

August, Hug, Rafha and Ryuka, in team 55580B ‘Blockade Brigade’ competed in the Elementary School Competition and Ben, Freddie, Pat and Pump, team 55580C ‘The Final Dogbot’ competed in the Middle School Competition.

VEX Robotics is a student-centred programme and the teams are expected to work very independently to design, build, code and drive a robot to complete a number of challenges in the competition. 

As you might remember, these 2 teams became Champions of Thailand in February, winning the Excellence Award at the Thai National Championships and securing the only 2 guaranteed places for Thailand at the World Finals.

Winning places at Worlds represented a huge success worldwide. There were over 16,900 teams from around the world participating in competitions this year but only 840 teams qualified for a place in the World Championships, making our DBS Teams in the top 5% of the teams from all around the world!

Our students were very well prepared for the competition as they had been working with Mr and Mrs Hall, our Robotics Coaches since the start of ASAs in Term 1. The ASA spanned 2 hours per week but the students were also required to work extra hours at home to complete their Engineering Design Notebook - a record of all their ideas, design, code and progress throughout the months. Many of the students also worked tirelessly over the Songkran break to put the finishing touches to their robots, code and practise their driving skills.

 

It was a long trip to Dallas, over 24 hours in total but the teams, Mrs Hall, Mr Dunphy and some of our parents arrived at the hotel determined to be as successful as possible. Their first task was to rebuild their robots which had to be separated into smaller pieces to fit in the hand luggage on the plane. They also took a full competition field to practise in the hotel and at the competition venue.

On the first day of the competition our teams got to work decorating their pits and taking their robot to pass the Robot Inspection to make sure they had followed all the stringent rules in their designs. They both passed first time. 

During the afternoon there was the inspirational Opening Ceremony where 4 of our students proudly took to the stage in the Parade of Nations, representing Thailand in traditional national clothing. 

DBS and our parents had kindly provided lots of ‘swag’ - lovely treats to give to other teams in our pits to share some of the culture of Thailand, such as elephant purses, tiger balm, DBS keyrings and including the popular (and sometimes unpopular) durian candy!

The matches started on the first afternoon and lasted for 3 days. Both of our teams started strongly, despite being nervous competing in such a huge venue with large crowds watching. The main competition is the Alliance Teamwork Challenge where 2 teams work together to score as many points as possible in 1 minute. As these teams do not know each other, they must find each other and practise their strategies in the lead up to each match. Our DBS Teams were excellent at seeking out their alliance partners and it was a fantastic opportunity to meet and liaise with other students from all around the world.

Both our teams barely put a foot wrong in the matches over the next couple of days. They played with a maturity beyond their years and truly embodied our 5 DBS values of humility, generosity, courage, integrity and empathy. In most matches we had the stronger robot and best driving skills, scoring the larger share of the points. Unfortunately, we were rarely partnered with a strong robot and so our combined scores were not as high as other teams. Our Elementary Team finished mid table in their division. Our Middle School Team was set to qualify for the Division Finals up until their last match. They were paired with one of the strongest teams in the whole competition and this should have been the highest scoring match until the other team broke a rule at the end of the match which lost them most of their points. This drop in points kicked them out of the qualifying places. Such a sad way to end the competition, especially as it was out of their hands! Despite the disappointment, though, our students showed a great attitude towards their disappointment and continued to enjoy themselves for the rest of the event.

 

Another aspect of the competition in VIQRC is the Skills Competition where each team works by themselves to score as many points as possible in 1 minute. There are 2 rounds; Driving Skills and Autonomous Round. 

The Driving Skills is as it suggests and our drivers score as many points as possible with just their robot on the field. Both of our teams drove excellently in this part of the competition but both teams were struck with bad luck and for one reason and another, they simply could not score as highly as they had been doing consistently in practices back at school.

 

In the Autonomous Round, the robot must have been coded by our team programmers to complete the tasks with simply the press of a button to activate it. Before leaving Thailand, both our teams had incredible code. It was accurate and reliable and could score highly. For some reason though, this code simply did not work in Dallas. The robots would turn random numbers of degrees and move more centimetres than they had programmed. It was beyond frustrating for our teams. They were determined to make it work and spent many extra hours in the evenings, refining the code until they had something usable, but sadly not high scoring enough to place within the top teams.. 

Our Elementary Team had also received a coveted Judges Interview which meant that they had impressed the online judges last month with their knowledge of the engineering design cycle, their engineering notebook and had displayed excellent teamwork during their online interview. This gave them the perfect opportunity to showcase their skills in the 10 minute interview. This was a sign of their high quality achievements throughout the season as not all teams were interviewed at the competition.

The grand finale to the event was an incredible Closing Ceremony featuring the finals matches between the best teams in the world. This was amazing to watch in the 10,000 seater arena and the atmosphere was electric as the new game for the new 2024-25 season was revealed! Our students immediately began planning their new robot designs and this formed a large part of the conversations on the way home on the plane!

After 3 days of playing their hearts out and going above and beyond in every aspect of the competition, our two teams sadly left with no awards this year but they did bring home a suitcase full of memories and incredible experiences! We could not be prouder of their performance and attitudes within the competition and generally during every moment of the trip. It was such a pleasure to accompany these fantastic teams on this adventure of a lifetime.

 

If your child is will be in Y6 or above next year and is interested in joining our DBS Robotics Team, please encourage them to join our ‘Pre-season tryout’ ASA on Monday or Tuesday, starting May 20th, so they can find out more about the requirements and I can assess their ability and suitability for a team place. Places on the teams are very limited, so attendance at this ASA doesn’t guarantee a place on the team but it does give me an opportunity to see who is passionate about and dedicated to robotics. Follow this link to find out more about the 2024-25 season game "Rapid Relay". Please contact me if you have any questions about this. Thank you, Mrs Hall