Singapore Vex Robotics Championship 2016

VEX Robotics Competition Discussion VRC > Starstruck (16/17)
1

Hi all,

Once again, I will try to do a summary for the just concluded Singapore Vex Robotics Champion 2016 (or SingVex to most of us).
Think there are still some forum users that will be interested to know what’s happening at this small little dot (on world map).

This year, we also see the comeback of the MS multiple-time world champion (i.e. 8065 / 66) into the competition.
For those who didnt know who they are, please do a bit of research on them… especially if you are going for MS Worlds next year :stuck_out_tongue:

And the comeback of 8065/66 resulted in the most intense and stressful final we have ever saw in SingVex.

I will try to anticipate some of the possible questions that some of you might be asking and try my best to give the info now (so it is going to be a long post)…

Robot Designs :-
80% of the robots are dumpbots. And mostly adopted the reverse dump approach. As for the intake, the dumpbots are mainly just a normal tray intake that slide underneath the stars and cubes.

But the design and material they used for the tray, and also the angle of the trays gave very different results in the efficiency of intakes.

They are also robots that have tray intake but front scoring, and also robots with tray intake + catapults scoring.

Another quite popular design is the claw intake and scoring. There are both motorised claws and pneumatic claws around.

As for the lifting - a mixture of 2-bar, 4-bar and 6-bar.

About 10% of the robots can do a high hang, which is pretty remarkable considering it is still early in the season.

How was the competition :-

At the end of the qualifying round, there was only 1 team that went 9-0-0… 8066X (made up of members from the previous MS world champ team).

The top 4 alliances for elimination were basically formed up by 2 alliances made up by all 8065/66 teams, and 2 more alliances made up with teams from 8068/8059.

Things got really exciting and interesting when we reached the SF onwards.
And at the 3rd/4th placing match - it was basically the juniors of 8065/66 against the juniors of 8068/8059.
The juniors of 8068/8059 prevailed against the juniors of 8065/66 and clinched the 3rd position.

The atmosphere was really charged up and tense just before the finals and also during the matches.
The million-dollar question that was on the minds of everyone was - will 8068/8059 (2nd seed alliance) be able to “dethrone” the multiple-time world champion (1st seed alliance)?

The 3 final matches were intense, full of drama and amazing display of the driving skills and robot mechanical endurance.
eg. Its a high hang… no… it is a low hang; last second flip of the cube that hit the field perimeter and rolled out, or how about flipping the cube from one far zone to the other far zone, etc
2 out of the 3 matches were too close to call.

But in the end, the 1st seed alliance of 8066X / 8066A / 8065A won by whisker.

Congratulation to the winning alliance and kudos to all the teams involved!
Any of the matches will not look out of place even in the HS worlds.

I will not be uploading any videos of the matches (out of respect for all the teams involved), but if any one is interested, I can give a detailed account of the finals.

I will also leave it to the individual teams to decide if they want to do a reveal of their robots.

Awards :-
Excellence Award (HS) - 8059D
Excellence Award (MS) - 8066X
Tournament Champion - 8066X
Design Award - 8068D
Build Award - 8059D
Robot Skills Champion - 8066X ( high score: 56 points)
Programming Skills Champion - 8059D (high score: 19 points)

2

Great news - I have spoken with the teams involved in the finals, and they are all agreeable to upload the videos.

But do give me some time to upload them to YouTube :slight_smile:

3

How many stars could most of the dumpbots hold?

4

If you are referring to pure capacity, it will be at least 3 stars.
I have seen the better teams dumping 4 or 5 stars during matches. But it is rare… Simply because most of the time the situation does not allow you the luxury of gathering so many stars before dumping.

5

Is data from the competition uploaded? I can’t even find the robot events page, but maybe that’s just me being not smart :wink:

6

The data will be eventually updated. But the organiser didn’t tick the box for live updating.

7

Ok. I will be waiting to pour through the data when it’s uploaded. And, with most robots being dumper bots affect how interesting the game was? We’re there times when no robots were doing anything?

8

@meng Can we have a link to the channel where the videos will be uploaded? Thanks again!

9

If you asked me, I really think star struck is an upgrade of clean sweep (apart from the fact that Karthik didn’t allow our version of wallbot :stuck_out_tongue: ).
It is supposed to be a non-stop back and forth action-packed game.
Unless your opponents are not able to throw anything back at you, else there should always be something for the robots to do.

And trust me, there are a lot more gameplay or strategy involved than what many people is giving credit to.

i will be uploading the videos tomorrow (Singapore time). There were 3 dumpbots and 1 claw bot involved. You can see for yourself if it is boring :stuck_out_tongue:

10

All the matches I’ve seen up to this point have been interesting, so I expect this will be too. Thanks!

11

Was a bummer we weren’t champions of Singapore Vex 2016. The finals were matched by equally skilled teams, and even gave 8066X their first loss in game 2. The atmosphere of the crowd, was however in our favour, as everybody looked forward to watch us “dethrone the multiple-time champions” :P. We might not have won first, but we did win the hearts and support of Singapore! 8068 and 8059 have shown huge progress in our journey in Vex.

12

As WANGG said, it was a tough match, especially considering that 8066X’s robot experienced malfunction during finals 1 and 2. If not for 8066A and 8065A’s exceptional performances, we would not have succeeded. The 8068 and 8059 series were experienced and controlled brilliantly. They displayed sportsmanship even after the finals, which we were really thankful for, as we were afraid that the tension between our schools would worsen. It was a truly memorable experience, which we have learnt a lot from. All the schools in Singapore played well. Looking forward to seeing you guys again:)

13

@meng Is 8059A going to reveal the would-be wallbot?

14

Did anyone film some or all of the matches?
I can’t find any videos on youtube if they did.

15
16

Thanks
I missed that.

17

Congratulations on such great finals matches! I cant wait to see the robots in action, and to see what some of your guy’s strategies were.

18

Nope :frowning: they scrapped the idea after the rules update came out

19

I was thinking they had already built it before the update

20

It was about 85% done. All it left with is the tether. They are now considering finishing up the wallbot and then do a reveal on it :slight_smile: