2009 VEX World Championship

[cabbagekid2]

Who's already planning to go? Where are you guys staying? :D

[lynca]

2587 - DiscoBots are planning on going, they qualified at the Houston VEX regional. Not sure on hotel yet.

[ManicMechanic]

We just laid down the money and are going (team 438 from Modesto). We heard rumors that there will be a good deal on the Hyatt Regency thru Vex; will check that out. Otherwise, the West End Hotel looks reasonably close to the Convention Center.

[klanicam]

We qualified two teams (921a and 921b) at the Western PA Regional. Are current plans are to stay at the Springhill Suites.

[Joe G.]

As of now we have 2 teams planning on attending, with 2 more hoping to qualify at local tournaments over the next few weeks. As of now, I do not know where we are staying (our sponsor is arranging this.)

Can't wait!

[NoahTheBoa]

Our Middle School team is attending (Team 84). They won the Excellence award in Los Angeles to qualify.

[Stephen of REX]

1727a and 1727b qualified, we will be sending a four man team with 1727a's robot to the championship. We would bring a lot more people, but the trip from Maryland is a bit far. No Idea on hotels yet, unless our club supervisor has looked at some.

[klanicam]

We just changed our reservations to the West End Hotel. There is a link on the robotevents.com website. The rooms are $89/night.

[dtengineering]

1346a,b and d have all qualified... 1346b has done it twice.

We're still putting the funding in place, but hope to have two or three teams represented in Dallas.

Jason

[Rick TYler]

So far, one of our four* VRC teams has qualified and is definitely going. We'll find out this weekend whether or not the others will make it. Fortunately, only one of Jason's teams is attending the Washington VRC event so our students have at least some chance! Now, if only we could keep the other Canadians out of the country. :)

* We actually have a fifth team now, but since this Saturday is their first tournament they have not yet had a chance to qualify. It will be fun -- 420 is by far the fastest Vex robot I've ever seen. I hope they can learn how to drive it in three days.

[IndySam]

829a and 829t have both qualifies and will be in Dallas.

[MasterRobot]

Team 2438 will be in Dallas with 2 Teams, we qualified at the Pan Pacific
and we will be staying at the Hyatt Regency Dallas

[akeisic]

We're (VRC 294) trying to drum up the support needed to go. We qualified at both our regionals winning the competition at the first and winning the Excellence award at the second. You can check out our bot here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_GVE4mY8vM

We've been strained for time this year as we're doing FTC, VRC and FRC! :cool:

[astephen68]

Team 478 Mustang Robotics is going to Dallas. We won Drivers challenge In the Southern Ontario Championship.

We will be staying at the West End Hotel.

[Rick TYler]

Update -- We are taking all five of our VRC robots to Dallas.

417 won the Programming Challenge at Washington.
418 won the Robot Skills Challenge and was a Tournament Winner at Washington.
419 was a Tournament Winner at Washington.
575 won the Excellence Award and Programming Challenge at Vancouver Gladstone. (Their primary drive team took the Washington Tournament off to give someone else a chance to drive.)

Only 420, which only competed in one event, has not yet qualified. They're planning to come to Dallas anyway, as they are likely to be invited through the waiting list.

All 41+ of us are staying at the West End Hotel.

[Dmoreno]

Team 1622's Vex team would like to go, but literally up until today we thought we wouldn't even qualify, or have the cash. We qualified the weekend of the 21st when we received the Excellence award at Hilltop High School's Vex Competition.

I actually have no idea when the deadline to sign up is though so O.o

[bellpride]

254 is going, we'll be staying at the Market Center Embassy Suites.

[Shelabot]

1086's VEX team shall be there also, along with our FRC Pit Crew and robots! Hope to see you all there!:D

[Rick TYler]

In the unlikely event any of you care... we are now staying at the Hyatt Regency. I think we have 16 rooms. I predict a lot of late-night computer game playing. :]

[ManicMechanic]

We are staying at the Hyatt; shortly after making our reservation, I heard a rumor that the robotics rooms there are all booked now. But I'd check it out anyway if that's where you really want to be.

[phr34kR]

Im not sure exactly how many of us form New Zealand are going but i do know there will be about 14 people from our team SymbiOHSis there, i believe we are staying at the west end hotel (the name had a west in it anyway:o ) cant wait to go :) Our team 2900a qualified by winning the excellence award.

[Nawaid Ladak]

I honestly would love to go to this event, I had my trip planned out, then i realized my finals were the same week

oh well, hopefully they will have a webcast like they did last year

[Andrew Bates]

I'll be there with my old teams from Cranbrook robotics. Sent in my volunteer application today. I'm looking forward to seeing some awesome VEX robots.

[Rick TYler]

I'll be there with my old teams from Cranbrook robotics. Sent in my volunteer application today. I'm looking forward to seeing some awesome VEX robots.

I'll be inspecting robots and anxiously watching my teams. We wear eye-scorching safety yellow shirts, and will have 48 people there. You will probably notice us -- come by and say hi.

[NoahTheBoa]

Im not sure exactly how many of us form New Zealand are going but i do know there will be about 14 people from our team SymbiOHSis there, i believe we are staying at the west end hotel (the name had a west in it anyway:o ) cant wait to go :) Our team 2900a qualified by winning the excellence award.

I know a Westlake Girls' team is going to make the trip. Good luck to the NZ teams going, from what I saw in the webcast you guys will definitely be competitive.

[blackiceskier]

two out of our three teams are going to dallas teams 1083a and 1083b are going "a" quallified the programming skills challenge while "b" quallified by winning the tournament both happened at the summit reagional


GO COSMIC ERA AND BETELGEUSE

[Meredith Novak]

All five members of the Novak family from the Bomb Squad are trying to get there to volunteer. I just found out the kids are out of school that Friday (good) but it is High School registration day for 2 of my kids (not good)...but Harley is on it...fingers crossed.

I am very excited about getting to volunteer at an event we are not sponsoring or supporting our own team!!!
Should be very relaxing :rolleyes:


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[Paul Copioli]

I will be there as a robot inspector and one of the MCs.

[Rich Kressly]

Should be a great time for sure. The volunteer support from the community is really appreciated!

[Chris Hibner]

It was a great competition and a fun weekend. It was nice to finally come to see a big VEX event. Big thanks to Karthik for inviting me to come join the fun.

It was nice to see a lot of the usual suspects from FRC since I wasn't able to make it to Atlanta this year. It was especially great to hear Paul Copioli talk about seeing the sights in Paris.

Oh yeah, the new game looks like it could be pretty interesting...

[Karthik]

It was a great competition and a fun weekend. It was nice to finally come to see a big VEX event.

I just want to take this time and thank all the amazing volunteers who traveled to Texas to help out at this event. We had an all-star crew of volunteers including some of the biggest names in the robotics community. It was great to see all these people come together and help make the 2009 VEX Robotics World Championship a resounding success!

For the full results please visit:

http://www.vexrobotics.com/championship/2009/results.php

[Alex Cormier]

I just want to take this time and thank all the amazing volunteers who traveled to Texas to help out at this event. We had an all-star crew of volunteers including some of the biggest names in the robotics community. It was great to see all these people come together and help make the 2009 VEX Robotics World Championship a resounding success!

For the full results please visit:

http://www.vexrobotics.com/championship/2009/results.php

I had a great time watching the Science Division matches and some of the elims. Does anyone have pictures of some of the winning robots? I was amazed at some of the uniqueness of the designs and how well they performed.

[Rick TYler]

I had a blast. We took six teams to Championships: 417, 418, 419, 420, 575, and 1899. Team 1899 competes in FRC with their high school, and in VRC with Exothermic Robotics Club. I worked all day Thursday as an inspector with Rick Kressley, Paul Copioli, Mike Martus and other nice people whose names have escaped me, and had fun talking to the teams -- most of whom seemed to think it was my job to disqualify their robot. They seemed surprised that the inspectors were being nice. My favorite inspector's moment: I found a robot that was too big to fit in the sizing box. Normally, a team goes away and either repositions some components or saws off a bit of robot. In this case, their mentor grabbed their arm and BENT it with his hands. The robot now fit, but I sure don't know how well it worked after that. The guy was strong.

Our students had a good time, earned some trophies, experienced tragic failure, and achieved some great successes. In other words, it was a robotics tournament. After having a bunch of PWM cables ripped out by another robot's belts which were stuck into the middle of their robot and then switched on, team 419 started say, "That's robots!" I think our team has added our third catch phrase, to go along with "It was on fire when we got there" and "stop, STOP, STOP!!!"

I had a great time watching the Science Division matches and some of the elims. Does anyone have pictures of some of the winning robots? I was amazed at some of the uniqueness of the designs and how well they performed.

Check out the galleries on the Vex forum. More and more pictures are showing up: http://www.vexforum.com/gallery/index.php

[Rich Kressly]

Here are a few statistics from the event.

1. In all 262 MS/HS teams and 13 college teams participated

2. Between the MS/HS and College Competitions 284 of 293 robots were fully inspected by the time pits closed on Thursday. The remaining 9 passed inspection Friday morning before opening ceremonies began. The count includes 26 college robots and 5 secondary robots for the MS/HS Programming Skills Challenge to go along with the 262 primary robots built by the MS/HS teams.

3. A total of 424 MS/HS matches were run on Fri & Sat adding up qualifying, division finals, and championship finals with a cycle time that averaged sub 3:30 for the bulk of the weekend. Of these 424 alliance matches, only 8 (or 1.99%) needed to be replayed - 3 for one mechanically failed crystal, 1 for a camera inadvertently damaging a robot, 2 for minor field issues, 1 for a communication error on the match starter's/emcee's part, and 1 for an unintentional team issue resulting in an unintended, yet unfair advantage.

4. An additional 75 college matches were run utilizing the new VEXnet, next generation communication system. I don't have the number of skills challenge matches that we ran either, but I do want to acknowledge those too.

How is all of this possible in such a short time frame with a limited number of people? As Karthik said earlier, it was an AMAZING group of combined staff and volunteers. Inspectors and our on field Refs (the folks I helped coordinate) were nothing less than stellar and our pit admin was the most rock solid "home base" I've had the pleasure of working with at an event. There scorers and scoring software were the best in the business. Not only do these guys develop a robust, elegant, and flexible product, but they show up and run it for you too. On site from the community to help out were 3 WFAs, 8 WFFAs, six present/former FIRST Senior Mentors/RDs, entire FIRST families, representatives from at least five FRC Hall of fame teams, at least five FRC championship teams, etc.

Personally, here's my incomplete (if I miss you, it's not intentional - my apologies) list of folks I was honored to serve the VRC Worlds with this past weekend:

The ENTIRE IFI staff (especially my good friends JVN and Karthik), Dave Scheck, Dave Flowerday, Mike Soukup, Paul Copioli, Chris Hibner, Mike Martus, John Novak, Meredith Novak, all the Novaks, Rhona Breadner, Emerald Church, Dan Green, Rick Tyler, Greg Needel, Paul Kloberg, Dan Larochelle (and the Rest of Intelitek support), Dave Lavery, Joe Vanderway, Mark Leon, Pat Fairbank, Todd Willick, The Nobles, and probably a dozen more I don't remember right now.

Wow ... it almost made me depressed to leave for home .... :D

[Dave Flowerday]

Here are a few statistics from the event.

(snip)

3. A total of 424 MS/HS matches were run on Fri & Sat adding up qualifying, division finals, and championship finals with a cycle time that averaged sub 3:30 for the bulk of the weekend.

4. An additional 75 college matches were run utilizing the new VEXnet, next generation communication system.
We ran well over 400 Skills Challenge matches, bringing the total in the course of 2 days to nearly 1000 competition matches! That's not even counting practice matches!

I'd add to your list of people to thank Chris Noble, Cis Noble, and the rest of the volunteers running the skills challenges. They were short-staffed the entire weekend due to volunteers who weren't able to make it and did a great job with an overwhelming task.

I had a great time at this event. IFI definitely has a winner with their VEX product - I heard that 200 teams are already signed up for the 09/10 season. The VEXnet communications system worked really well and has a lot of potential to make all these matches run even faster (if the volunteers can keep up!).

Also, the wrap party was simply awesome. The Arc Attack show was perfect for the audience, and was one of the neatest things I've ever seen. The food was really great and the staff was friendly. It was by far the best robot competition team party I've been to in the past 8 years.

[Meredith Novak]

I heartily agree with all the praises posted above for this event. It was pure pleasure to be a part of such a tremendous and professionally-run tournament. I am totally amazed at how many matches were run and how few problems and delays we encountered. I think we ran matches until 7pm on Friday and we were on schedule! I just wish I had a picture of my daughter Riley when I told her at about match #90 that we were going through match #141 on the first day.

My only disappointment or complaint about the entire weekend is that JVN stuffed JTN inside of "Tornado" late in the day and my camera battery was dead :ahh:

All 5 of the Novaks had a great time - thanks for inviting us!

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[Mike Soukup]

our pit admin was the most rock solid "home base" I've had the pleasure of working with at an event
I'll second this one. I spent almost the entire weekend behind the scorer's table and any time I needed anything, it was delivered in minutes.

All 5 of the Novaks had a great time - thanks for inviting us!
Whenever I looked out at the three main arena fields, I was reminded how they could not have operated without the Novak family.

Also, the wrap party was simply awesome. The Arc Attack show was perfect for the audience, and was one of the neatest things I've ever seen. The food was really great and the staff was friendly. It was by far the best robot competition team party I've been to in the past 8 years.
Seconded. This was the best team party I've been to. Better than Atlanta, even better than Disney. The food was great. The layout was great. The Ark Attack show was entertaining and awe-inspiring at the same time, an excellent mix of music and technology.

[Pat Fairbank]

I definitely had a blast at the VEX World Championship, refereeing and hanging out with the Simbots. It was a pleasure to work with the star-studded volunteer crew, and also great to meet the trio of Wildstang guys who put together a rock solid scoring system (and weren't half bad at running it, either). The venue setup was fantastic, and the whole event, especially the elimination rounds, had a very slick and professional feel. Even the 18" sizing boxes were so nice-looking that my reffing partner Ryan "Scoot" Shaw and I felt compelled to make use of them on the field a whole bunch. I'll also throw in my agreement that the wrap party was epic.

I'll be back next year for sure.

[Akash Rastogi]

The ENTIRE IFI staff (especially my good friends JVN and Karthik), Dave Scheck, Dave Flowerday, Mike Soukup, Paul Copioli, Chris Hibner, Mike Martus, John Novak, Meredith Novak, all the Novaks, Rhona Breadner, Emerald Church, Dan Green, Rick Tyler, Greg Needel, Paul Kloberg, Dan Larochelle (and the Rest of Intelitek support), Dave Lavery, Joe Vanderway, Mark Leon, Pat Fairbank, Todd Willick, The Nobles, and probably a dozen more I don't remember right now.

Wow ... it almost made me depressed to leave for home .... :D

Wow. That's the most impressive list of volunteer staff I've ever seen. That's nuts. I so need to attend next year.:yikes:

[Rick TYler]

I thought some of you might enjoy seeing this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqovGM8Tl7Q) of VRC 575 running its "43-point" Programming Skills Challenge routine. In this video, a cube takes a bad bounce and leaves them with 37 points, but you will see it could make 43 or 44 points. This robot had the highest PSC score at Worlds with 37 points, running their safer "37-point" auto.

[Chris Hibner]

I thought some of you might enjoy seeing this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqovGM8Tl7Q) of VRC running its "43-point" Programming Skills Challenge routine. In this video, a cube takes a bad bounce and leaves them with 37 points, but you will see it could make 43 or 44 points. This robot had the highest PSC score at Worlds with 37 points, running their safer "37-point" auto.

That is AWESOME! I thought that the skills challenge was the coolest new feature of the VEX championship. I wish FIRST would do something like this. The drivers' challenge is a cool idea and the programming challenge is also extremely cool. I love it.

[Brandon Martus]

Here's a video of team 2213a from Puerto Rico scoring 60 points in the robot skills challenge: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1FY4vNx8as

[Rick TYler]

Here's a video of team 2213a from Puerto Rico scoring 60 points in the robot skills challenge: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1FY4vNx8as

After reading the Vex forum and watching my own teams practice, I thought that as many as 10 teams might do 60 point scores in the RSC. I was surprised at the actual results. Neither of our teams that did 60 on our practice field repeated the feat at Dallas. The drive team from 2213a had ice water in their veins. Nicely done.