Five robotics teams from Indian Prairie School District 204 are headed to St. Louis, Mo., next week to compete in the VEX Robotics World Championship.
Beginning April 21, the teams will compete at the largest robotics competition in the world.
Representing Illinois in record numbers
With just 12 teams representing Illinois among over 700 others, Naperville is sending a record five high school teams.
Over 150 Illinois teams competed for a spot at the World Championship.
Team 2360C Clockwork from Nequa Valley High School was the only team to earn a direct qualification as finalists at the Illinois State Championship in March, while the other four qualified through cumulative skill scores and judged awards.
“Roughly eight different judged awards are given out at most competitions. The Excellence Award is given to a top team. They’re sort of an overall, all-around really solid team. There’s a Design Award that’s given to a team that has a great design, has does a really good job of documenting their whole process of designing and building their robot, and has been able to demonstrate that they worked together as a team,” said Khalid Ali, a parent coach for Team 2360A Arachnid.
Teams 2630A Arachnid and 355Z Falcons from Nequa, 8995H Habanero from Matea Valley, and 355P Powerhouse from Nequa and Waubonsie Valley qualified off a waitlist through cumulative skill scores. The scores are determined by competition record and through earning skill awards.
This year’s challenge ‘Push Back’
Over the last year, teams have competed in the game “Push Back.” Each year, a new game is created, and teams program their robots to fit the objective of the game.
“What we have are four match loaders, which have these red and blue blocks loaded from the beginning, and then you have these four different tubes, different heights, different sizes. And the objective of the game is to take your color blocks, and you’re going to load them up into the different tubes. And depending on which tube and where in the tube your blocks end up, you’ll get different numbers of points.”
At competitions, teams are paired in alliances with another team to challenge two other opponents. They qualify for additional rounds of competition based on their performance.
Five teams, united by one goal
As a parent coach for Team Arachnid, Ali has helped coordinate between the teams to work together to practice and refine their robots.
“It’s really incredible to see how they evolve over the course of the season, and as I’ve observed my son,” Ali said. “One of the beautiful things that we observe is that it doesn’t matter if you’re at Nequa or Metea or Waubonsie or in a private program, these kids, yes, they compete against each other, but they also help each other out.”
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