The Cambrian College eDome was filled with the sounds of young people and their robots Jan. 12, duking it out against teams from across the province at the qualification rounds for the VEX Robotics Championship.
It’s the first time Cambrian College has hosted the event, and Jim Allman, engineer and professor at the college, said this hopefully won’t be the last.
“We've got teams from as far away as Sault Ste. Marie to the west and Ottawa to the east and all the way down to Oakville and Toronto and Brampton, as well as some local content, too,” Allman told Sudbury.com
The competitors at the are middle school and high school students from across Ontario vying for a spot at the provincial championships, or even the World Championship held in Texas later this year.
In these Cambrian-hosted qualification rounds, points are what matters, and existing teams join together with the participants from the other teams.
“In the qualification rounds, they are randomly teamed up together with another team, and they have to work together to earn points and hopefully win their matches,” said Allman. “The top 16 teams at the end of this round pick their teams based on who's left.
At the end of the qualifiers, there are two tournament champions because the two teams that got together and go all the way in and up to actually win the tournament get an automatic buy to the provincials.
But the rest of the teams are still earning points.
“At the end of the season, they add up all their points,” said Allman. “Then based on rankings, they could also be invited to the provincials, even if they didn't actually win a tournament.”
It’s part STEM education — science, technology, engineering, and math — but in many cases, said Allman, these teams also have students covering “the business side.”
“Because a lot of these teams are very professional, even though they're students, they have their own websites they're running, they are scheduling their own tours, sometimes they do come with coaches, but the coaches are really very hands off,” he said.
The coaches accompany the teams to the tournaments, but are not allowed to assist.
“If somebody's missing a screw, coaches can go get them a screw,” said Allman. “But really, that's about it. They can't do any of the work.”
The teams had a practice area and room for equipment set up and repair, and spent much of their time running from the staging areas to the main hall, where two courts were set up.
The competition saw students first competing to launch triangular foam pieces into the court, then the next step was moving their foam pieces into the goal. Points are awarded for each piece.
All the standings and information for the tournaments can be found at the VEX Robotics Tournament website, found here.
