Vex Competition Idea

[Tetraman]

I've had this idea for a while, I'm not sure if it has been done, but I want to put it out here because it can do better in the thoughts of others than just in my head.

I got the idea from Food Network Challenge, and from some other shows simiar to it. Here is the idea.

Vex teams arive at the competition with their supplies, laptops, and other materials that are needed to build a Vex robot, but nothing put together. Than, the competition is revealed and explained to all teams. Teams than have _ hours to build their Vex robot, and than compete after the build time is over.

I think it would be really interesting, like I said i'm not sure if it has been done before, if it has than ok, but if it hasn't, I suggest that an off season event will try for this type of competition.

[Greg Marra]

That sounds like a really cool idea. You might want to allow teams to come with pre-assembled squarebots just to make sure everyone winds up with something that can actually drive, but the concept is really cool. You could even announce the secret "Bonus Part" that they're allowed to use halfway through the competition.

It'd be like some sort of crazy combination of Junkyard Wars, Iron Chef, and VEX, all at once.

[SamC]

That would be a cool idea. To go along with Greg's idea, you could also have some item in each team's pit/build area that each team has to use on their design...

[Nuttyman54]

that sounds like an awesome idea, though I seem to recall someone on CD mentioning something like it being done somewhere.

[Hieb]

There was a show similar to this on the DIY channel a few years ago. The show format had collegiate teams in a 16 team bracket, with the teams competing head to head. I'm not sure if each team brought their own supplies or if they had common parts to choose from, but they were given something like 12 hours to design and build, then they would compete. They also had the "mystery item" idea. For example, in one challenge the teams were each given a treadmill, and whichever team used the most parts from the treadmill received a 15 second time bonus or something like that.

I think I like the idea better with the VEX kits. Have both teams starting on equal footing as far as parts available, and then challenge their creativity in solving the problem, not which team has the better equipment/bigger budget.

[KelliV]

Originally Posted by Hieb

There was a show similar to this on the DIY channel a few years ago.

That was Robot Rivals

This idea would be a lot of fun! I would like to see how it turns out.

[Schnabel]

Or you could be mean and give them 1 hour, allow only 1000 parts per robot, and only preprogrammed instructions to use!

[Carol]

MOE did something similar with our VEX in a Day Competition that we put on for the local Ulster Project. There were nine Vex teams consisting of Northern Ireland Catholic and Protestant students, their host students in the US, and a MOE student serving as a Vex mentor. They arrived in the morning and had until 1:00 to build a robot when the games began. And they had to learn how to build a robot as well. The robots were just simple square bots used to just push around balls, but the competition was more spirited than you would think. Below is a link to the post on it, and a link our site that describes how to put a similar competition. Also on the link is the video of the day's competition. (I love the Irish accents).

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showpost.php?p=527767

http://www.moe365.org/ulster2006.php

[nonother]

This sounds like a really fun idea, but I think it could turn out to be very unfair for smaller teams such as mine. In a situation where time is extremely limited a team that had more people could subdivide tasks much more than a small team. This could perhaps be avoided by limiting the amount of members of a team that could compete. Or maybe most teams are 10 people and it's not worth considering this, I honestly don't know how large most teams are.

[Lil' Lavery]

116 has run a "mini-bot" competition for at least 6 or 7 years now. The last two we've used the vex kit (well really, the last one, tonight will be the 2nd year). Before that we used plywood, scrap metal, and drill motors. We give the students a new game every year, and they have 1-2 meeting to build, then compete. We aim to create simple games that can be played with square-bot level machines. Each group gets about a starter kit worth of parts, give or take some.
This year each team will have about an hour and a half tongiht, and a few hours saturday morning to build, then we compete after lunch on saturday. I'll post pictures/video/results then!