HENRIETTA BARNETT REGIONAL COMPETITION 2018
On the 26th of January, our team Gear Squad, went to a regional VEX IQ competition at Henrietta Barnett School in North London.
As soon as we arrived there, we immediately stared to set up our pit areas –merely a few small tables. We arranged our laptops and battery chargers so that they were near the power sockets, cleared space for the robot and the box of parts etc.
Firstly, we had to take our robot for robot inspection; Dillan and Varun (the drivers) took the robot for that, whilst Shilacshan, Alex and, Vihaan set up the STEM project board. Having done that, Shilacshan took the engineering folder, with our notebooks in them, to the judges who would be looking at them.
Now, the competition had commenced, and the timetables were handed out. Unlike our previous competition – the regional at Fortismere – there were far more teamwork matches. The robots there were also much more complicated, with complex mechanisms and programming. The drivers went straight to the practice fields to practise. Vihaan and Alex were left with the more important job of scouting for our alliance partners and discussing tactics. For some of our alliance partners, (often those with robots with the capability to pick up both the floor rings and the starting peg – in which case, they pick up from the starting pegs and we pick up the floor rings) we drew out the plan on plan views of the board; this made sure that they understood, but also made sure that our robots do not collide at any point. For other robots, the plan was quite obvious, so this was not required. In between practising with our alliance partner, there was a bit of building (if the robot breaks), autonomous and driving.
Whilst this was happening, the judges were coming around to assess our STEM. For Vihaan, Shilacshan and, Alex, the wait should have been agonising but, they could not really tell for they had jobs to do. Eventually when the judge did come to us, Shilacshan, who was at the pit area, alerted Vihaan and Alex who were our other two presenters. All taking a deep breath, we carried our board, laptop and, model to the judging room. 4 minutes later, when the presenting had finished, the judge asked us questions. In fact, she was struggling to come up with questions, to the questions that she eventually did ask, Vihaan, Alex and, Shilacshan answered them quite well.
The teamwork round had finished, but skills were still going on. During this time, the design interview judge came around for the interviews. Our interview went quite well, for we had answered all the questions, but not as well as we anticipated, as the question that we were asked were quite difficult.
After this, the final alliances for the teamwork final were up on the board. We were in the penultimate match with a team called WGS Microbots. Although, we were in the penultimate match, we won the teamwork finals not that far out from the rest of the teams.
Eventually, it was time to hand out the awards. At this competition, there were 32 teams, so the excellence award was up for grabs. Since we had already qualified for nationals, our target was this, which as an automatic spot to worlds. Unfortunately, we did not win this, and we were slightly disappointed. We won the teamwork award, as well as the design award, which we did not expect. As a matter or fact, our school won most of the awards! We really enjoyed the day and can’t wait to get back to building and more. We have to improve in all areas, especially STEM, autonomous and, driver skills. But, we should still work on design and teamwork – we must not get too complacent. We do not think that we will attend more regional competitions and our next competition is nationals – our last opportunity to qualify for worlds.
Co-written by Shilacshan Lingakumar and Vihaan Jain