A local elementary school’s robotics team will venture beyond Brown County lines to compete with schools from all over the world in Texas.
Late last month, a Van Buren Elementary School robotics team — consisting of coach April Evans, programmer Isaac Evans and drivers Julia Moore and Gage Harden — competed against 130 other elementary teams from across the state for the 2023 VEX Indiana State Robotics Championship.
The competition took place on March 25 at Lucas Oil stadium in Indianapolis. More than 350 robotics teams from elementary, middle and high schools across the state gathered to compete.
In the face of such a huge number of competitors, and it being only their third year since forming, the Van Buren team was able to rise to the top — they scored high enough to be invited to compete at the VEX Worlds competition in Dallas, TX, where they will compete with 800 elementary school teams from all over the world starting April 25.
The competition is the largest robotics of its kind in the world, according to its website.
The students said they were all nervous before going to the state competition, but they were also looking forward to it.
“I was excited and I was a little nervous, because there was a ton of people, and it was right in front of everybody,” Harden said.
“It’s fun to see the other robots,” Isaac said.
“This year there were whole different designs. Almost no robot with the same design, except there were some with almost the same design as us.”
Each year, the competition is different, forcing teams to create new robots that carry out different tasks. All the different robots can be both remotely controlled by the drivers and programmed to carry out movements on their own.
This year, the objective for the drivers and the programmers was to assemble and control a robot that could collect plastic, orange pucks from three different types of dispensers, then slide the pucks under a bar and across a scoreboard.
The final score the teams received depended on the amount of pucks that made it across the bar, and the distance the pucks traveled on the scoreboard.
There were four zones the pucks could land in on the board, scoring from one to four points for the team.
“So when they compete, there’s actually two different types of competitions,” April explained last week.
“There’s the teamwork … and then, outside of that, there’s what you call, ‘skills,’ and that’s individual runs.”
In the teamwork portion of the competition, the students are paired with other, randomly-selected teams to work together and score as many points as possible.
In the individual skill portion, teams have three opportunities to score their most points, in both driver control and in programming.
All three students first gained interest in robotics in different ways.
“We had these Legos that you could program, and it was just a whole lot of fun,” Isaac said.
“I decided we might as well do robotics, because it’s like a more advanced version, and that’s how I came to be the programmer.”
“My dad owns a business, and it’s like racing, and we always build stuff, like motors and stuff,” Harden said.
“So I thought this would be kind of fun, because I’m already kind of experienced in building stuff.”
“In third grade, Mr. Steele asked if I wanted to try robotics for a little bit, and I said yes,” Moore said.
“And I tried it for a little bit, and I ended up liking it a lot, and I wanted to do it again this year.”
In addition to driving and operating the robots, the students said they enjoy learning how all the parts work, and how they get to build different robots every year.
Support the team
The students are all very excited about making it to Worlds and competing in Texas, however, April said the team is looking for support to make the trip happen.
The team as to cover the cost of travel, housing and meals for the competition, which April said is not a cheap endeavor.
Donations can be made to the Van Buren PTO, to be transferred over to the robotics team. Contact Heather at [email protected]. for more information.
