Hey everyone!
I am a member on the newly founded Old Dominion University VEX U team and was looking for some advice for our team. We were not able to really secure funding until early December, which means we were not able to start building until mid-December. Since then, things have been really hectic trying to rush for our competition in early February. Being our first year and a huge learning experience, we have not had the best book keeping regarding notes and the like and have run into numerous “walls”. So I have two questions: 1. What is expected from us for the presentation? 2. Any advice for a newly founded team heading to their first competition in just over a week?
Has anyone on your team had previous experience with robotics competitions (Vex, FRC/FTC, BEST, underwater ones, soccer players, etc)?
The Vex U tournaments are slightly different from other Vex ones with two robots in your control and expectations of knowing a bit more than a middle schooler may apply. (Maybe)
The judging is about explaining your design process and showing the judges you know your stuff. Proof of design (pictures, CAD, calculations, etc) all apply still and you should have more knowledge under your belt to explain in proper engineering terms what is going on. Stresses, angular velocities, forces acting on parts, etc.
Vex U is also a bit different in that you have two robots and not paired up randomly. So the complete field is in your control. Each robot should have its own plan of attack and you need to work in tandem to get the job done. practice driving until it is second nature and let the judging part come with experience. Driving the wheels off the robot and programming autonomous goes a long way.
Read this, it applies still to Vex U:
http://www.vexrobotics.com/wiki/101_Things_You_Should_Know_Before_Your_First_VEX_Tournament
#4 is key: “Reliability is the best robot feature of all.”
#18 is another key. You can’t go far without batteries!