A team from New Hope is three days into an international competition in Louisville, Kentucky, where a robot they built is competing against other robots from teams around the world.
All three team members are 11 years old.
The Vexecutors is one of four teams started this year as part of New Hope Elementary’s new after-school robotics program. Teammates Brady Hogan, Joshua Wilcox and Thomas Oglesby were all invited to the elementary school division of the Vex IQ Challenge — an international robotics competition hosting teams from all over the world. They left early Saturday and have been competing in different robotics challenges since Sunday.
“It’s amazing,” said New Hope teacher Jennifer Caldwell. “There’s 272 teams that are here from 30 countries, just from the elementary (age group).”
The teams — which come from most U.S. states and countries like Canada, China and New Zealand — participate in three days of robotics competitions, driving robots they built and programming them to perform tasks.
“It’s very exciting because we’re getting to meet a lot of new people and make a lot of new friends,” Hogan said.
The program
Hogan and his teammates are the only students from the Golden Triangle in the competition, though there are other teams from Mississippi.
New Hope High School robotics teacher Tracy Doyle suggested NHE start a robotics program, Caldwell said. Doyle thought if the kids began learning to build and program robots while still in elementary school, they’d already be ahead when they joined robotics teams at the high school level.
“We were just getting our feet wet,” Caldwell said.
Caldwell and another teacher, Carol Brown, started the group for fifth graders — though Caldwell said they hope to expand it to fourth graders next year. An initial group of 20 was whittled down to 12 as some kids decided they didn’t like staying after school and others determined robotics wasn’t their thing. The 12 students make up four teams who design robots, using parts from wheels to batteries to Legos.
The tech-savvy nature of today’s society has helped the kids learn the process, especially the computer coding, Caldwell added.
“The kids are teaching us how to do this,” she laughed.
The program builds the students’ skills in everything from computer programming and critical thinking to teamwork and mechanics, Caldwell said. All four teams have competed at various times this year, including a statewide contest in Vicksburg in February.
But only the Vexecutors were invited to the worldwide competition.
The competition
The way to get to the competition, Hogan said: “Build a robot and practice a lot.”
The boys spent three or four weeks building the robot, Hogan said, and have modified it even since the competition in Vicksburg. They must drive the robot with a remote control for the “driver skills challenge,” but they also have to code it to perform tasks — like pick up and carry around a tennis ball on its own.
The team builds up points over the three-day competition, depending on how well the robot performs the tasks. They get bonus points if the robot drives to a see-sawing bridge at the arena and balances perfectly in the center of it.
On Monday, the challenges got harder, Hogan said.
Hogan, Oglesby and Wilcox have known each other since before they all joined New Hope’s robotics program, which makes it easy for them to work together, Hogan said. But at the competition, the kids had to work with other teams of students they’d never met, and whose languages they didn’t even speak, while programming the robots to perform the same tasks they’d performed Sunday.
“It was a little harder because we couldn’t speak their language and couldn’t communicate as well,” Hogan said. “Luckily, a translator came in and helped us a lot.”
Monday morning the team worked with students from Mexico, while the other robotics students at New Hope watched via live-stream. Later in the afternoon and evening, the Vexecutors worked with a team from China.
While it’s exciting to meet so many other kids from other parts of the world and to work with them on challenges, Hogan said it can be hard “breaking out of your shell.”
“So it’s exciting, but difficult,” he said.
Today is the last day of challenges for the competition, Caldwell said. At the end of the day, teams with the most points over the competition will receive in awards in everything from design or building to teamwork and sportsmanship.
But the best part of the competition for Hogan is seeing the finished robot complete its tasks.
“All of your hard work has paid off,” he said.
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