Erych Frankenfield, Managing Editor
The Penn-Trafford High School VEX Robotics teams have had quite the successful competition season between the competition hosted by P-T in December and the Keystone Oaks State Qualifier in January.
The teams have won numerous awards over the season, including the Innovation award and the Excellence award, and being the champions of the bracket-style tournaments and skills challenges.
Robotics and engineering teacher Jeff Newsom, the sponsor for the teams, said that they have enough students for five teams and that most of them have qualified to move on to the Western Pennsylvania State tournament.
“Usually we keep it to a group of three or four students on each team, and the number of teams we have is based upon how many students are involved,” he stated. “All teams have qualified for the Western Pennsylvania State Tournament.”
At the Western PA STATE Championship, according the Robot Education and Competition Foundation, the robotics teams have five chances to move on to worlds. The categories that qualify for worlds are Tournament Champions, Design Award, Tournament Finalists, Robot Skills Champion and Excellence Award for High Schools.
P-T senior Haydon Wolfe, who is part of team 1462A, said to win a competition, a team can either win the skills challenge or the tournament.
“For each competition, there are two different ways to win. You can win the actual tournament, which is an elimination bracket, or you can win the skills challenge, which is your robot competing against itself for the most amount of points it can score,” Wolfe said.
Newsom explained that the game that the competitions are based around, called Tower Takeover, revolves around stacking blocks in scoring areas and multiplying zones to get the most points. He said that the strategy with this game is more centered on teamwork and making robots work together to score high;
“It’s stacking blocks and scoring them in multiplying zones. They stack different colored cubes,” Newsom said. “This year, the game is designed so that one robot is good at one task and another robot is good at another task. The idea is for them to work together in order to score points.That is where we are kinda leaning toward with our teams. We have a few robots that are made a certain way that score points a certain way and others that are made to compliment that other robot.”
Wolfe added that they prepare for tournaments by packing extra parts because “lots of things break a lot of the time.” He said they bring extra batteries for the robots and extra cubes for practice.
Newsom explained that robots have to pass an inspection and that the teams have to register for the tournaments in order to participate. The competitions cost money to register as well and Newsom said they have to plan for transportation ahead of time.
The teams use the same programming software all year for the robots, but can change the programming to make their robots perform better based on modifications made to the physical robot. Wolfe stated that his team has changed their robot several times over the year.
“We’ve had three different robots built this year so far. The first one was a little bit wobbly, so we redesigned it kinda took a different approach. And we’ve redesigned it yet again for a completely new approach that has won us both a design award and an innovation award in two different competitions,” Wolfe said.
Newsom explained that the robotics classes are required to be a part of the team and that the team originated within student interest from the classes about a decade ago.
“When we started our program over 10 years ago, we just basically taught basic stuff and then VEX started creating games and tournaments and my students wanted to participate back then and it just started,” he added.
From local and county to states, this is one of the most successful robotics team seasons according to Newsom. Earning a spot as one of 400 teams in the world competition is their next and ultimate goal.