Who are we?
We are the VEX robotics team known as the X-Bots, a group of 4-H'ers that come together for a common purpose- competing in state and world VEX tournaments. VEX is a rapidly growing youth centered robotics program. For VEX there are many challenges to overcome. The first and foremost of challenges, is the ever changing game. Every year VEX changes the playing field last year it was Sack Attack, a game with bean bags as the main playing object. This year is Toss Up-a game played with Bucky and Beach balls. Secondly, each team must come up with a new robot design every year to be able to conform to the new game design. Every robot must start smaller than 18 in x 18 in x 18 in. Also, only VEX certified pieces may be used. With this restraint comes many frustrations, while VEX pieces may be sturdy, they do not work well for every application. For example, on our robot last year we used flat metal VEX pieces for a scoop to lift the bean bags and dump them into the scoring trough. One of the problems was that the scoop was always getting stuck on the foam mat. Finally, the last challenge is programming. Programming can be one of the harder aspects, because it is not tangible. It is all on the computer. One thing that VEX has done to help robotics teams with programming is to give all registered teams their AutoDesk program, a comprehensive programming curriculum. VEX is a awesome robotics challenge that is educating the next generation in programming and robot building skills.