Fourth grader Elijah Barnes said Barkley Bridge's seven-member team decided to prepare for the competition at Auburn last month by constructing a more sophisticated robot with a flywheel that contains two rotating wheels that can launch balls into a 2-foot basket. A lot of other teams stuck with push-bot robots that only push balls into the scoring goals that are near the basket.
Barkley Bridge's more challenging creation earned it a state Build award for quality robotic construction, and with that came a spot in the VEX Robotics World Championships this summer in Dallas.
"The only reason we built this flywheel is because we were expecting a big competition because everyone is trying to make it to the (World Championship)," Barnes said. "There were actually more push-bots there than flywheels."
Flywheels are one of the more technical robotic devices used in VEX IQ competitions because students can adjust the speed of the wheels to better determine the path that the balls will travel.
This year's robotics team members at Barkley Bridge will go to Dallas with confidence after accomplishing a feat that no other Hartselle elementary school has done.
"Barkley Bridge will be the first elementary school in Hartselle ever to advance to a global robotics competition," said Kim Jared, their coach and a gifted specialist at Barkley Bridge.
Jared said the Build award is presented to the team with the best "sturdy, well-crafted robot." She said there are currently 206 teams worldwide that have qualified for the Dallas competition.
The students started building robots in September and have two completed. They say they will have two more completed before the world competition in May.
Fifth grader Parker Moore was modifying a conveyor belt piece on a robot on Wednesday.
"The conveyor belt allows us to adjust this (a catapult-like device) that throws the balls," Moore said. "With this robot, we can adjust it to whatever height we need to shoot the balls through the goals, but there is a height limit though."
In VEX IQ competitions, each match lasts 60 seconds. The robots compete in a 6-by-8-foot rectangular arena and each team's robot will shoot balls into a basket in the middle during that length of time and gain points for every successful throw. The teams can only use only one robot in the competition.
Teams can also score points by clearing all the balls placed in the corrals, which are the four perimeters of the arena, and shooting them into or near the goal. They can also score points by hanging on the plastic bars that are situated around the arena.
Two schools are paired together to face two other schools in a match. Jared called it an "alliance" when two teams pair up to work together to score as many points as possible during a match.
"The objective during a tournament is to make it through the preliminary rounds to the final rounds, and then from the final rounds the top four teams will be selected," Jared said.
Fourth grader Clay Menanno said advancing to state and winning the Build award was not easy. He said he has worked extensively to get the robots programmed accurately.
"Sometimes, the robot would just spin around instead of going forward or backward or whatever we needed it to do," Menanno said. "It would do the opposite of what we wanted it to do."
The 2022 VEX IQ World Championship will be held at the Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center in Dallas and the elementary schools will compete May 10-12.
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