2011 VEX Robotics World Championship Seminole Ridge High freshman Connor Piegaro joined nearly 10,000 middle school, high school and university participants from 16 countries around the world to compete in the action-packed 2011 VEX Robotics World Championship at the Walt Disney World® Resort near Orlando, Florida on April 14-16, 2011. Kari Byron, host of the Discovery Channel’s hit show MYTHBUSTERS and the Science Channel’s HEAD RUSH, emceed as teams from the United States, Canada, China and New Zealand triumphed or got toasted during the intense three-day tournament. This year, almost 600 out of the nearly 4,000 VEX Robotics Competition teams earned the right to bring their robots to the roundup.
Team 1614 Connor Piegaro and Coach Erich Landstrom from Seminole Ridge HighRound Up, the 2010-2011 VEX Robotics Competition Game, is played on a 12’x12’ square field where two alliances composed of two teams each compete against one another. Each match consists of a twenty-second autonomous period where robots are controlled by onboard software, followed by two minutes of human-operated play. The object of the game is to attain a higher score than your opponent alliance by having your robot place round tubes upon goalposts, owning goalposts, and by your robot climbing the ladder in the center of the field and hanging high off the ground.
Erich Landstrom, Seminole SECME school coordinator, points out that Seminole SECME had great success in their inaugural year of VEX Robotics Competitions. Team 1614 from Seminole Ridge won the Miami VEX Round Up Qualifier in October, and finished as finalists at the South Florida Championship in December and the “Mayhem in Miami” in January. Our robots are clearly to be reckoned with, a masterpiece of machined metal, a Cinderella story of circuits and steel at ‘bot ball. All attending teams qualified for the championship after dedicating countless hours to honing their building, programming and strategy skill sets to outperform and outmaneuver others in order to reach the international stage. After a series of intense back-to-back scrimmages, Connor controlled the BBot from Seminole Ridge High to record of four wins, four losses, and one tie during the qualifying rounds, and a ranking of 52nd place.
Landstrom applauds Piegaro’s perseverance and the Hawks hard work: “Giving SECME students the opportunity to work with the VEX robots promotes education in the areas of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) and teaches critical life skills such as teamwork, project management and problem solving. But celebrating National Robotics Week at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex gives the event mainstream recognition similar to that of an international sporting event.”
Team 1614 Connor Piegaro and Coach Erich Landstrom from Seminole Ridge HighUpon arrival, students were showered with confetti from bursting canons, welcomed by stilt walkers, a resident DJ, and entertained by a graffiti artist that painting the town robo-red in honor of the intense competition. The games kicked off on Thursday and continued Friday when teams from around the world poured into the stadium for the opening ceremonies, waving colorful flags from their respective countries and hailed by Mickey and friends. MYTHBUSTERS & HEAD RUSH host Kari Byron joined on Friday night to unveil the 2011/2012 VEX Robotics Competition game Gateway. The object of next year’s game is to attain a higher score than your opponent by picking up colored balls and barrels and placing them in circular goalposts of varying heights. Bryon then served as master of ceremonies to guide teams and spectators through the final award ceremony on the last day of competition.
The VEX Robotics program is in support of The White House's STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Math) initiative to get kids engaged in higher learning, and recently received attention from President Obama who visited a Miami Central High School classroom where he interacted with students excelling in STEM education through VEX Robotics.
BEST Robotics, a middle and high school national robotics program established in 1993, also hosted its second annual national championship alongside the VEX Robotics World Championship. The Boy Scouts of America were on hand to award some of the first Robotics Merit Badges to more than 25 deserving scouts. Meanwhile, the U.S. Coast Guard Academy AROW hosted its water robotics competition.
Presenting co-sponsors of the 2011 VEX Robotics Competition World Championship include Autodesk Inc., NASA, EMC Corporation, and the FUTURE Foundation. Additional supporting partners include Robotics Education & Competition (REC) Foundation, Microchip, Intelitek, Robotics Academy at Carnegie Mellon University, the CREATE Foundation and Northrop Grumman.
