I friend and I (both on FVC 3053) just competed in Robot Ramble for Science Olympiad. Ourselves included about a full 1/3 of the robots at the competition were made of Vex. Last year we were the only ones to have a Vex robot. The kit is definetly catching on.
I am contemplating bringing some FVC literature with me to the NJ State Science Olympiad tournament to spread the word
I was curious if anyone else here that does Science Olympiad has noticed the amount of Vex, and if so I urge them to spread the word!
We didn’t see any other Vex bots (admittedly, only saw 2 others). The other teams put together robots with individual components. One team we talked to extensively spent about $500, plus about $400 of leftover parts from the previous year. Compared to this, the Vex kit is a bargain. We used a very simple robot built from the starter kit (no add-ons) with only one manipulator that placed second. So far, Robot Ramble hasn’t been very popular at our Science Olympiad – one year, only 3 of the 15 teams entered a robot at all.
My senior year, (2006) I entered science olympiad for the first time and i built a bot for the robot ramble out of my vex kit. It was my 4th year participating in FIRST, my robot could pick up everything in less then a minute, i was worried about other schools doing it faster. Turns out I was the only robot to be able to even pick up everything without having problems - I was quite proud of myself!
Anyways, there were 2 other vex robots i believe, one was made from another FIRSTer from another team in town.
I personally think they rock. I built a vex sumo bot for Churchville-Chili’s Sci. Olympiad team. Gold medal for our region. Beat every one else that they faced flat out, proving that vex rocks.
