Ithaki is sponsoring and coaching 6 teams from Scheppersinstituut Mechelen for VEX Robotics competition (VEX IQ & VEX V5).
On Wednesday, December 18th 2024, all teams were invited by Mosa-RT to participate in a scrimmage to practice for the upcoming VEX Robotics Competition in February 2025. A ‘scrimmage’ is a practice (unofficial) game for training purposes.
This article focuses on VEX V5 ‘High Stakes’ for age 16 – 17. A total of 5 teams participated: 3 from the Scheppersinstituut Mechelen and two from Mosa-RT (Maaseik). Since a match requires 4 teams to play, this was an ideal opportunity for all teams to engage in their first practical, ‘high-stakes’ matches. The objective is to put rings on stakes with 2 ‘RED’ teams collaborating against 2 other ‘BLUE’ teams.
Such scrimmage is an ideal learning opportunity that is very different from the experience ‘at home’. It provided extremely valuable feedback and learnings, allowing all teams to make significant improvements to their robots, such as:
- Team Valère improved their intake mechanism by replacing plastic parts with metal for better durability and performance. The plastic parts had proven the concept, shape and dimensions, but did not perform reliably on a rubber mat.
- Team Vortex realised they had a unique advantage: with their arm, they can place rings on the highest stakes. They adapted their game plan accordingly the exploit this advantage.
- Team Viktoria crushed the first battle. They had a well performing robot. In that first battle, there was very little interaction / contact between robots. This changed in the following battles and their robot got stuck several times on top of a ring. They are assessing how to reduce the risk of getting stuck in the middle of a battle.
Learning & feedback were the goal of this scrimmage. And yes, we learned a lot:
- The underground has a significant impact on driving & taking objects. The right terrain is not always available and some tests happen on a harder surface. It is important to keep in mind the battles happen on the rubber surface.
- Batteries only last 1 battle! Each team needs several batteries and a good battery management strategy.
- Strategy: even if you can’t score, you can prevent the opponent from scoring. This was the first time teams looked into game tactics. Funny anecdote: this resulted in the scored points for the first game being higher than for any of the other rounds.
- In real ‘combat’, there is a lot of touching between the robots and things break. An interesting recommendation was to make sure expensive components such as a piston don’t break. Things will break. Ensure they are cheap and easy to replace.
- Mosa-RT had a box to validate the dimensions of the robots. It was discovered that some robots were 1mm to wide. It is cumbersome to file off some pieces during the competition day (which some teams effectively did in the past).
Overall, this scrimmage was a fun and educational experience. This event was not only a great learning opportunity but also a chance to bond with other teams and prepare for the challenges ahead.
Thanks Mosa-RT for this opportunity. We appreciate the venue, the food & drinks and your assistance & guidance for all teams. 🙏🏽
Kasper
Agile note:
Some of the teams of Mosa-RT used a Kanban board with magnetic cards.
Great to see how these students get opportunities to learn such valuable skills. They will for sure benefit from this experience in their future studies and professional life.
Maarten