Never enough 7/16th Wrenches

Region 4 Competitions

Since its founding, the VEX team has participated in the annual Region 4 Competition. The Region 4 Competition is hosted by Stephen Schapinsky of Region 4 Robotics in Queens. Each year, a FVC-esque challenge is released. Teams are given six weeks to build a VEX box to compete in the final event.

Region 4 Competition 2006

Since the team was started after the end of the 2006 FIRST VEX Competition season, our first competition and highlight of the year was that year's Region 4 Competition. The object of the game was to transport an empty soda can from the “home zone” and locations around the field into a bucket at the opposite end of the field. However, robots had to perform this autonomously with the only human contact being in the home zone.

Our team submitted two robots to the competition after only a few weeks of brainstorming, designing and prototyping. Both robots used a conveyor belt mechanism to autonomously dump cans in the bucket. At the end of the day, our team was awarded for our efforts with the competition’s Programming award.

Region 4 Competition 2007

This year, we once again competed in the annual Region 4 Robotics Competition in Queens. The game involved scoring PVC pipes in one of three corner goals or a bucket on the far corner of the field which had a ramp leading up to it. Additional points were awarded if robots ended the match on the ramp or had managed to place special score-doubling pucks in a certain zone. Like last year’s game, everything had to be done autonomously, with the only allowable human contact being in the corner “home zone.” To accomplish this task, we decided to split into three teams, each working on a different robot. In the six weeks we were allotted, we succeeded in designing and building all of the robots, each with a different method for lifting and carrying the game pieces.

One arm design used a set of ridges on an inclined conveyor belt to transfer the pipes to a storage area on the robot. The game pieces would remain there until the robot reached a goal. At that time, the bar at the back of the storage area would be lifted, allowing the game pieces to fall in and score. On another robot, there were two tracks of tread working as a conveyer belt and moving the game pieces from the field to the top of the. The pieces would remain on the constantly moving conveyor belts, as they were prevented from falling off the top by a bar spanning the back of the robot. When the robot reached a scoring zone, the bar would be dropped and the pieces would move forward with the belt, off the top of the robot, and into the scoring zone. The third arm design was a claw with two purposes. The first was to grab game pieces and place them into the back of the robot, where there was a flat rectangular storage area that had a movable flap on the back. When the robot had game pieces in its storage area and was in a scoring zone, the flap and the arm would. The arm essentially acted as a lever in tilting the robot backwards, allowing for the game pieces to fall out.

With a relatively small group of people working on each of the three robots and with the six week build coinciding with many end-of-year projects and tests, each meeting was hectic as the team strived to complete and program each robot in time for the competition. However, despite being a bit short for time and there being few teams who showed up at the actual event in the end, this year’s Region 4 Competition was still a success. Our team placed second overall and the unique design of the ridged tread helped us win the competition’s Design Award.