GREENVILLE, Texas – July 3, 2015 – Students from the following schools secured top honors at the Technology Student Association (TSA) National Conference VEX Robotics Championship that took place in Dallas, Texas, this past week. In the VEX IQ Challenge, Team 23059B from Holman Middle School in Glen Allen, Virginia, received the Excellence Award, the highest honor in this division. While Team 8434Z from Haile Middle School in Bradenton, Florida, and Team 9084T the Chrome Broncos from Richardson, Texas, received the Teamwork Champion Award. In the VEX Robotics Competition, Team 2131D from Davis High School in Kaysville, Utah, received both the Excellence Award and the overall Tournament Champion Award at the event. The second and third place Tournament Champions in the VEX Robotics Competition were Team 7232B and Team 7232 the Cyber Pirates from Belton High School in Belton, Missouri.
The students took part in three full days of competition with over 80 teams participating from across the United States in conjunction with the 2015 TSA National Conference. Middle School teams competed in the VEX IQ Challenge Highrise, which is played on a 4’x 8’ field as teams work together to achieve the highest score by placing red, blue, and green squares in the designated scoring zone and stacking blocks to build Highrises for additional points. The action-packed competition schedule required middle and high school students to execute the VEX Robotics Competition Skyrise, a game that requires students to maneuver their robots on a 12’x12’ field to score points by scoring colored cubes on floor goals and posts and by building and owning Skyrises. Teams compete in matches consisting of a fifteen-second autonomous period followed by one minute and forty-five seconds of driver-controlled play plus individual Program Skills and Robot Skills Challenges.
“Students competing in the TSA VEX IQ Challenge and VEX Robotics Competition demonstrated keen engineering and teamwork skills this week,” said Jason Morrella, president of the Robotics Education & Competition Foundation. “The REC Foundation is pleased to continue to partner with TSA to engage students in hands-on robotics engineering programs. It’s an experience that provides a strong foundation in STEM that will serve them well throughout their lives.”
To prepare for the competition, the groups of students worked together to design and build a robot using VEX IQ and VEX EDR that could quickly and efficiently solve specific obstacles and challenges that come with playing the 2014-15 games, VEX IQ Challenge Highrise and VEX Robotics Competition Skyrise.
Each week, students apply what they’ve learned about science, technology, engineering, and math in order to build the semiautonomous machines. An equally important set of skills is learned through the competition – design, communication, project management, teamwork, and the importance of composure, as students learn to deal with adversity in maximizing the design and performance of their robots.
The TSA National Conference VEX Robotics Championship is one of a series of VEX IQ Challenge events and VEX Robotics Competitions taking place internationally throughout the year. The REC Foundation manages the VEX IQ Challenge, the VEX Robotics Competition, and VEX U, which are the world’s fastest growing competitive robotics programs for students in elementary school, middle school, high school, and college. During the 2014-15 season more than 12,000 teams from 33 countries participated in over 1,000 events worldwide. More information about The REC Foundation is available at RobocticsEducation.org and RobotEvents.com.
About the REC Foundation
The Robotics Education & Competition Foundation, a 501(c) (3) non-profit organization, seeks to increase student interest and involvement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics by engaging students in hands-on, sustainable and affordable curriculum-based robotics engineering programs across the U.S. and internationally. The REC Foundation develops partnerships with K-12 education, higher education, government, industry and the nonprofit community to achieve this work. For more information, please visit www.RoboticsEducation.org or www.RobotEvents.com.
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