Building upon the success of the inaugural VEX World Championship in May 2008, the tournament for the 2008-2009 season will move to a much larger venue to accommodate the growing popularity of the VEX Robotics Competition. We’re pleased to announce the site for the second annual VEX World Championship (April 30 - May 2, 2009) will be the Dallas Convention Center and Arena located in downtown Dallas, Texas featuring a 9,816-seat arena and covering more than one million square feet.
The 2009 Vex Robotics World Championship will include top teams from approximately 100 VEX Robotics Competition tournaments happening in cities around the world from October 2008 to April 2009. To make the World Championship celebration even more accessible to top performing teams, space has been secured to ensure that each and every winning team from any official VEX Robotics local tournament with 12 teams or more will qualify for the World Championship. Teams will play the game Elevation for the 2008-2009 season.
Exciting enhancements and additional game play activities are planned for the upcoming season. In addition to the traditional team alliance match play, there will be full fields dedicated to the Elevation Programming Skills and Robot Skills challenges, which will also each crown a 2009 World Champion. Plus, the VEX Robotics World Championship will also expand to include a separate college championship pilot for 2009, details of which will be released at the end of September, 2008.
The VEX Robotics World Championship is the final event in the 2008-2009 VEX Robotics Competition season. Winning teams from local and state VEX Robotics Competitions will have the opportunity to meet in Dallas and compete against other top-ranked teams from around the world. Giving students the opportunity to work with the VEX robotics systems promotes education in the areas of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) and teaches critical life skills such as teamwork, project management and problem solving. Teams can register for the 2008-2009 VEX Robotics Competition season at www.RobotEvents.com and can also view the full listing of all local events around the world.
Hm, conveinent location to IFI. Awesome. I can’t wait for the VEX season! Now, there really is an affordable, local and competitive robotics competition in many locations around the USA and the world. It will be an awesome season!
This is great news. I hope Dallas can attract more VEX teams to the Houston VEX qualifier. VEX Houston needs to grow more teams to meet our goal and we always need more robotics teams !
http://vex.txfirst.org (if this website goes out , than that means I just lost power ! )
about 100 tournaments around the world, and guaranteeing that every winner from every event can enter the World Championship - very impressive.
I remember watching the webcast in class with some students back in May of the last Vex World Championship. That looked incredible and I think it had around 100 teams. The 2009 Vex world championship sounds like it will be HUGE! Now we just have to qualify somewhere. :rolleyes:
That is great as Vex is a really great competition.
I am glad New Zealand is doing Vex before FRC in 2009 because it gives a chance for students to learn the basics of robot building when mistakes don’t matter so much. Once they have learnt the basics on the Vex they can apply the ideas on a bigger scale with better understanding.
The one thing I hope is maybe in a few years they may be able to bring the Vex and FRC competitions closer together in date maybe FRC the first week Vex the next week.
It would be good for overseas teams to keep the cost down. So if they qualify for one competition but not the other they can still go and watch.
The problem with that is that the VRC and the FIRST competitions are run by two different organizations. I suppose they could get together and plan to have their competitions at the same time but since they recently split I doubt it will happen.
Wow don’t say that to the kids on our two Vex teams who have worked very hard on their robots. It means just as much to them as the students on our FRC team.
I mean’t more from a safety / ease of assembly point of view.
For an example we stripped a plastic gear which didn’t cause a safety hazard and was cheap to replace. But if this was on an FRC there could have been consequences also the cost would have been higher.
Also with the Vex since you use all standard parts if something you try out doesn’t work you don’t loose much in terms of cost because you can just reuse the part. But in FRC you custom make a part it doesn’t work you are stuck with a waste of materials.
Vex having a longer timeline also means that students can try out more ideas to see if they work. On FRC because of the build time if an idea is not likely to work then the mentors have to step in and suggest the time might be better spent on a different approach. But with Vex you can let them build it and prove / disprove their ideas.
I agree a well designed Vex robot is just as important as a well designed FRC one. But for people who haven’t built robots before I think Vex is a great starting ground that will give them confidence to work on a FRC robot.
I also think that a Vex World championship title is a worthwhile goal to aim for in its own right.
When our new school year starts in late January there will be a big push on Vex to get ready for our March regional.
So in case I have offended anyone again I’ll just say " Both Vex and FRC are great concepts in their own right but they also compliment each other".
Nobody in their right minds has any authority, and I don’t care if you’re Dean Kamen, Bill Gates, or any other notable figure, to belittle any other robotics program.
Who are you to say an FRC gear that costs $10 is more than a VEX gear that costs $5? I know FRC and VEX teams that work with generous budges and others that barely have enough to make bases and compete.
What’s wrong with a standardized set of parts? I know that in FIRST you CAN get standardized parts and create a good robot out of them. And in reality THOSE parts that are simple, readily available, are the ones that make for the shortest down times as opposed to having tons of custom machined parts.
And there are many statements to chop up and clarify but using the search function would be much more efficient.
You might be able to compare apples and oranges because they’re both fruits, but you can’t compare an apple to my Toyota Camry… It just doesn’t work.
Its not about the robot, its about what the person on the other end of the robot gets from building the robot. And I can honestly say I’ve seen more inspiration in EARLY, GEAR, and FLL from little kids and Legos** than I have from people who have driven and won competitions with FRC robots.
I am not sure if your post is directly aimed at what I said.
If it is, I think you have misunderstood my comments.
I wasn’t saying that FRC parts are better then Vex parts, I was stating that for people learning Vex parts maybe safer then having a FRC metal part break. Also a lot of FRC robots use custom gears that have to be remade if broken compared to an off the shelf Vex part.
Also I have no problem with a standardised set of parts it is what I like about Vex. I think at times it takes more ingenuity to make a robot out of standard parts then custom ones. I also think the FRC KOP is a good idea as well.
To finish as I stated before I believe both Vex and FRC are equally valuable competitions.
