The Vex Robotics Competition has had student teams from Hisar joining and representing the competition nationwide since 2016. As one of the most successful projects of Hisar Mechatronics, Vex teams work systematically and collaboratively throughout the year. This year, two teams are participating in the tournaments. Hisar’s Vex teams in the 2022-2023 school year are majorly made up of 9th and 10th graders. The Vex Competition is made up of several regional competitions and an annual event where winners of the regional competitions gather. In each competition, teams are assigned alliances that aid the development of each other’s robots during the challenges.
“The robot we take to a competition never ends up being the robot we come back with.”
-Dila Yağmurdereli, Coordinator of Vex @Hisar-
The Vex competition aims to teach students how to think and operate like an engineer. Each year, small games related to the year’s pre-determined theme are organized where robots of competing teams fulfill the round’s technical requirements, collect points, and move ahead in the tournament. This year’s theme is “SpinUp!”, thus we expect to see competing robots throwing discs, carrying a certain amount of weight, etc. Each game has about half an hour in between, these breaks are usually at different times for different teams. It is within these intervals that teams note and modify the features of their robot to be fixed, improved or added.
Vex also has a strong programming side to it. Writing, debugging and executing the code of a robot is always up to several members of a team. During quarantine, students received online trainings in C++, a common coding language, from this year’s Hisar Mechatronics coordinator: Selin Orbay. This year, students who pursued their passion for coding in this activity used their training to become mentors and tutor the next generations of Vex team members.
The teams are now competing in regional matches, one of which takes place at Hisar School, in hopes of going through and possibly winning the National Championship in 26th of February.
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