Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 84 Page 85 Page 86 Page 87 Page 88 Page 89 Page 90 Page 91 Page 92 Page 93 Page 94 Page 95 Page 96We had two teams in the VEX Robotics National Finals this year, both hoping to follow on from last year’s success and come home with trophies. The event lasts three days and is hosted as part of the Big Bang show at the NEC each year. Our first day was a chance to get our pit area set up and test out the robots on the competition field. With a little tweaking they were both up and running smoothly and ready to start competing. Day 2 saw the start of the competition and both teams started strongly. At one point we had both teams ranked in the top 10 but as the games went on the girls’ team of Charlotte Pagan, Lydia Banks and Selin Arikan started to drop back a little. The boys’ team (Toby Barham, Carter Buckingham, Haresh Ravindiran, Havandeep Khatkar and Stephen Hickingbotham) suffered a few early losses but came back strongly to finish in the top 8 with the girls’ team just outside. The competition then moved into a knock out system with the teams selecting their alliance partners from other teams ready to compete. The girls were chosen with some good robots but were paired against strong opposition in their first match and were knocked out in the first round. The boys selected a strong alliance partner and managed to knock out the 3rd seeds in their quarter final match but were defeated narrowly in the semi-finals by the team that went on to win the competition. Overall it was a strong showing from both teams in their rookie year. The boys were the youngest team in the National Finals competition and competed very strongly against much older students. The girls were one of only a few all girl teams to have made it through to the finals and showed excellent creativity and originality with the design of their robot and earned the Create Award for their clever design approach. The new game challenge for next year looks to be an exciting one and we hope to have four teams competing at various events throughout the year, including the event that we will be hosting. All are working hard to develop their robots and win a place at next year’s National Finals and maybe, just maybe, go one stage further and win the whole thing. Mr Sweetman vex 2016 roboTiC naTional finals 36 | The CovenTrian