Valley City and Tower City students to head to National VEX IQ Robotics Competition in St. Louis
TOWER CITY, N.D. (KVRR) — Robotics teams from both Valley City and Tower City have earned their spot to compete at the VEX Robotics World Championship in St. Louis. A championship with students from across the world, from elementary to college, will display their skills to solve an engineering challenge in the form of a game.
“During the match, you have two drivers and one of them drives the first thirty, and then you switch in the middle,” said Joseph Bata, The Men in Black, Maple Valley.
“I load, what loading is during the match you saw me put the pin on that beam, that’s what the loader does. And they can come pick up the pin. And that pin is now included with the score in the game,” said Gavin Schatz, The Men in Black, Maple Valley.
Students, with guidance from their advisor, build a robot using snap-together VEX IQ parts. The robots are reworked throughout the course of the year to function with the game.
“By the end of the year, a lot of the robots start to look the same because the students have decided this is what’s best for this year’s competition. Then next year they might get a totally new design with a totally new robot,” said Derek Bear, Maple Valley Robotics Coach.
“They rebuild and build and rebuild, and it’s just kind of a fun process because they’re really thinking. And having to troubleshoot, problem solve and look at how things are best fitting together, working for their robot,” said Joelle Manlove, Valley City Robotics Coach.
Outside of just competing, the teams say working together helps build their communication skills and their future.
“You work on speaking skills, writing skills, engineering skills, all sorts of things. You have to talk to adults, talk to kids, all sorts of things. It really helps you in the long run,” said Beckett Ness, Three Geniuses and The New Guy, Valley City.
As the competition nears, the teams say they will be tuning their robots and working on their driving.
The VEX Robotics World Championship begins on April 25th
