Robotics Announcements - January Competitions

On Saturday, January 18, Isidore, James, Nayan, Ethan and Arjun headed to Brampton for our first VEX competition of the season. We brought one robot to compete at this event, and another that we could use some downtime to keep working on improving. At these competitions, each team gets about six matches to play, and for each one, they get partnered with another team to work together in a teamwork challenge match. Alliance teams both receive the points scored in the match, and standings are based on the average number of points scored in your matches. 

Unfortunately, Team 4951A (aka the CDS Cyclones) had some pretty unlucky alliances throughout the day, with three of our six alliance partners finishing in last, second last, and third last place overall. This meant that our average score put us in 32nd place overall out of 39 teams. Still, it could have been worse, and seeing some of the other teams’ robots at this event really helped us recognize the possibilities that we may not have realized were even out there for our bots. Following this competition, James and Isidore undertook a massive rebuild of their bot with only one week before our next tournament. And Arjun, Ethan and Nayan also took great advantage of the day to continue to refine and improve both the build and the coding of their robot, which is looking and running better by the day. 

We were lucky to be able to enter two teams in this past Saturday’s competition at Pickering College, and this time brought 9 students to participate, adding Aara, Daisy, Runqi, and Chauncey to the team from the previous week. James and Isidore’s bot was almost unrecognizable due to the makeover it underwent through the week, and we were confident in its ability to hold its own amongst the competition. Runqi and Aara’s bot, built entirely based on inspiration photos with no instructions, was also ready for its debut on the VEX stage. 

The experience that we gained at the previous competition better prepared us for what was to come, and both teams were lucky to have a slightly more balanced schedule of alliance partners, meaning that our results were quite a bit more closely aligned to our abilities as a team. The results came down to the wire, with 4951A finishing in a very respectable 18th place, just a few points away from qualifying for the finals, which included the top 16 teams. 4951B, after some technical difficulties and emergency repairs, finished 35th out of 42 teams - not bad for its maiden voyage at an incredibly competitive level. 

As a team, we’ve come a long way since the start of the year, accomplishing so much. We have four functional and constantly improving robots. We have a group of incredibly dedicated students who are learning more every day about engineering, mechanics, and coding. And we have some fantastic memories of two excellent events, and the chance to look forward to one more tournament in February. Wish us luck! 

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