The McCallum robotics program hosted a Vex robotics tournament on Saturday Dec. 7, which drew in 27 teams, four of those were underclassmen teams from Mac—B, C, D and E.

This season’s game is called “high stakes” and is played by two alliances, red and blue, made up of two teams each. There are 48 rings on the field, half red and half blue. The goal of the game is to end it with the most points. You can earn points in different ways, primarily by scoring points through placing the rings on stakes including five mobile goals with stakes, two wall stakes, two alliance wall stakes and one high stake on top of a ladder, which is only able to fit one of the rings. There are also two positive corners, which will allow for mobile goals to have points doubled, but there are also negative corners, which will make rings on that stake count zero points and will also deduct the same amount of points from the alliance’s other scored rings. There are many other ways to score points, but those are the most commonly used.

Multiple rounds of high stakes were played throughout the Saturday tournament, which started at around 10 a.m. and ended at around 4 p.m. By the end of the tournament, one of the Mac teams, 8756B—Brody Adair, Brendan Paver, Eleanor Sebastian, James Wood Surrago and Enzo Zelsnack—placed second overall after going 6-1, partnering with a team from Lake Travis High School and upsetting the top-rated team in the semifinals. Another Mac team, 8756E—Liles Cardenas, Leah Garel, Isabel Perez and Athena Wintle—finished third, partnering with a team from Bowie High School after finishing the qualifying rounds with an undefeated record. The A team, comprised of seniors, ran the tournament and acted as scoring refs.

We are pleased to share some of our favorite moments from the tournament as this week’s Tuesday Top 10 photo essay.

MAKE-OR-BREAK: This year’s game at the VEX robotics competition is intense, with numerous different rules, groups had to keep a lot in mind during the development process for their robots. According to sophomore Eleanor Sebastian, each game can be make or break for the teams.

“This game is high stakes this year,” she said. “You’re trying to score by bringing hoops to the corner of the arena area, so we know we knew we had to have a good grip on that. There are two things called the negative and positive corners. Positive corners double the rings on them, while negative corners negate them and send them to zero, so we made a point to avoid those. We’re also always making sure to defend the positive corners, as it affects the game greatly.”

The robotics teams have been planning their robots for this competition for a while now, although there are still always adjustments they have to make while actively competing.

“We have pieces in the robots room that we use,” Sebastian said, “and we had to assess the game while developing then analyzing what our robots would need. Then we picked a design and started building it, and as the tournaments happened we realized what we needed to have, what we didn’t need, what we needed to improve and what we needed to go off of.”

As a sophomore and an active member of her team, Sebastian is happy with how they progressed throughout the tournament.

“We’ve been paired with good teams,” she said. “In one particular match, we were paired with our own McCallum B team, which had great defense of the positive corners, so it presented a good challenge. Robotics is at a great spot right now.”

Caption by Wren Vanderford. Photo by Lillian Gray.

BUILDING COMMUNITY AND ROBOTS: Throughout their time building the robots, students got to connect and build new friendships. One student, Enzo Zelsnack, is new to robotics this year and has enjoyed the opportunities that come with being in a community like the robotics club.

“My favorite part of robotics has been the social aspects,” he said. “For example, everybody in the group shares similar musical interests, and I’ve been enjoying learning about robotics while also working in a fun setting.”

Zelsnack began with robotics this year and took on various roles at the robotics competition on Dec. 7.

“I worked out the drinker,” he said, “which moves the rings to the corner, other than that I also do basic maintenance before rounds making sure everything is on tight, such as the bolts. Sometimes our driver, Brody Adair, drives erratically during an intense round, so I need to make sure the parts stay together. We also pump air into the robot for the numerical system which helps move parts without using a motor.”

Although he recently joined robotics this year, Zelsnack has already seen great improvement in his group.

“I joined this year so I don’t know about how the group was last year,” he said, “but this year we’ve already gotten better. The competition went really well, and I’m proud of my teams performance yesterday.” Photo by Wren Vanderford.

NEW CHALLENGE, NEW TEAM MEMBERS: Every season, VEX creates a new game that robotics team members are faced with and have to build a robot to compete in. This year’s game forces students to create a robot that is able to stack rings onto mobile goals in order to score points. The change in games each season is something that robotics teacher Audrea Moyers appreciates.

“One of the things that I like about VEX is that they have a new problem to solve every year,” she said. ¨Even though the equipment’s the same, they have to analyze the game, and they have to come up with solutions that are unique that year. They are using their knowledge from prior years, but they have to kind of redesign a problem.”

As returning teams were faced a new game, some new teams and members had to adapt to a uncommon playing field and game.

“Three of our four teams were competing for the first time this year, and they had very different experiences match to match, so I think they learned a lot,¨ she said. ¨It’s hard just watching a video online to know how it’s actually going to be in person, so they all learned a lot about what gameplay is like, how to work with an alliance partner [and] how to adapt during the day to changes.”

Photo by Lillian Gray.

TRIAL AND ERROR: Sophomore Brody Adair, who has been with the robotics club for a year and a half, adjusts his team’s robot before a match. Throughout the competition, teams would make small adjustments to their robots to keep them performing at their best. According to Adair, their efforts paid off in this end with a successful competition

“The competition went great,” he said. “We made a lot of improvements and ended up getting second place out of the 30 teams from varying schools that were competing. It was incredibly fun.”

Adair has been working alongside the teams in creating their robots and believes that they overcame various ups and downs throughout the process.

“We did a lot of research on what other teams had been building along with doing an extreme amount of trial and error while testing,” he said. “This year we’ve been doing a lot better, and we’ve learned a lot through failing and overcoming it. We’ve come a long way since previous competitions.”

Adair is proud of the great work his team has done this year in comparison to his previous competitions and enjoyed every step it’s taken for them to place second in this year’s competition.

“Our first year was pretty difficult,” he said. “I didn’t really know what I was doing, but this year we got some hope and inspiration from some of the other teams, and that helped us a lot. I enjoy robotics, although my favorite part is the run-throughs, research and development, and the trial and error we go through with each new robot.”

Photo by Wren Vanderford.

POSITIVE CORNERS, NEGATIVE CORNERS: The game at the VEX robotics competition changes every year, and this year it’s extremely technical with more aspects that have to be taken into consideration when developing the robot. 

“This game is very different from last year’s game,” said senior Zane Wiggins, a referee and scorekeeper at the competition who’s also a senior robotics team member. “Last year there was only one mobile game object to interact with, while this year there are two. This means that we now have to design mechanisms for two completely different objects in the game, which makes it much harder. Last year also had more interaction between the robots because you needed to fight for the game objects, while this year it’s more time-based. Students tried to get as many points on their own as possible, making the driving strategies much different. The teams had to take into consideration the time limit and try to score points as quickly as possible.” 

Although he wasn’t participating in this year’s competition, Wiggins is still an active member in robotics and is pleased with how the teams performed, rising up the rankings. 

“We had two teams reach the semifinals and one team even advanced to the finals which is great! I’m very proud of both teams. Both of them reached the top because they had insanely good drivers who knew how to take advantage of situations in the matches.” 

An important aspect of the game is the corners, which each have their own unique attributes that affect the scoring system. 

“The main purpose of the game is to stack rings onto mobile goals with stakes on them,” Wiggins said. “There are red and blue rings, and you go for whichever color coincides with your team color. There are more ways to score points, you can climb the massive ladder in the middle for more points and also put rings in the higher stakes on the other side of the arena. The main secondary way of scoring points is the positive and negative corners. If you move a mobile goal into a positive corner, the point values for the rings in the corner double and can increase your team’s overall score. On the other hand with negative corners, the rings placed in them essentially become negative point values and take away from your overall score. The corners were the hardest part of reffing the game since they have many rules, and since there are four corners you have to be paying close attention at all times.”

Photo by Wren Vanderford.

EMCEE EAGER TO ENERGIZE COMPETITION: As a match takes place, UT master’s student and leader of their vexU team, Hasif Shaikh, emcees and comments on the action in front of the crowd. Shaikh has competed in robotics for five years, one of those years in high school, and four in college.

“A part of our team’s values is to do outreach by volunteering for STEM events in the Austin area,” he said. “Giving back to the community helps foster growth. I have personally emceed at quite a few robotics and STEM events throughout college. I enjoy commentating on matches and making it an exciting experience for everyone.”

Throughout the day, Shaikh watched many matches with 30 teams competing in the tournament and came up with unique commentary for every situation. As an emcee, Shaikh had to have a thorough knowledge of the game and its rules and was pleased with how the students performed.

“The teams did great overall,” he said. “It is always fun to see students or anyone learning and applying what they are learning in the classroom in real life. As someone who has been in their shoes at one point, I feel like I have a greater appreciation for knowing what they had to do to get their robots where they are.”

Caption by Lillian Gray. Photo by Wren Vanderford.

PREPARING FOR THE ROAD AHEAD: Freshman Ben Bowman works with his D teammates, Niko Fiebig (left) and Hari Ayyappa (right) during the skills section of the robotics tournament. In preparation for the tournament, Bowman explained the long process to create the robot that was ready for gameplay on Saturday.

“We went in every Tuesday and Wednesday after school, and sometimes at lunch,” he said. “We asked our mentor, Doug (he’s awesome) for help when we needed it, and we also got lots of help from the sophomores. We tried to pay close attention to where we were building things onto the robot to make sure that it wouldn’t affect something later on. We had to keep in mind the size of our robot and things we were adding to it, because there are constraints. For the most part, we kind of just followed what other people had done and tried to finish a pretty basic robot in time for the competition.”

Going forward, Bowman is looking forward to the long road ahead which will allow him and his team more time to adjust to this season’s game and building of the robot.

“As the programmer for my team, I hope to improve my coding skills just in general, especially for the autonomous period where I have to code the robot to move by itself. For the builders on my team, I know for a fact that they want to improve on their skills enough that they could be more creative, and not just make a basic robot design.”

Photo by Lillian Gray.

CONSTANT MAINTENANCE: In between rounds, technicians would utilize different tools to keep their robot performing at its best, from tightening screws to debugging code. Sophomore James Wood-Surrago, a member of the B team, would frequently use an air compressor to touch up his group’s robot.

“We use the air compressor to refill out air reservoirs,” he said. “The air is used to operate the pneumatic systems that we have on our robot, the clamp and the arm. Between each match, we have to check the battery to make sure it’s charged as well as make sure we have enough air to use the systems. As for checking screws, there are only a couple of important screws that we check between matches, otherwise, that’s just about all the maintenance we do.”

Although he’s not the team’s driver, the one controlling the robot, he still makes sure to assist the driver in any way he can.

“Something that I have to keep in mind while helping my teams driver during a match is that he’s a person,” he said. “The driver can’t really do everything I want him to because he’s controlling the robot, not me. I also make sure to give him as helpful advice as I can while letting him focus on driving.”

This year’s game requires a lot of focus from the driver, and a lot of actions by other group members revolve around what the driver requires.

“Leading up to this competition, we have spent lots of time having our driver practice driving the robot around the field and having me make minor tweaks to the code so it’s how he likes it,” Wood-Surrago said.” “We also spent a lot of time getting our autonomous code, the period where the robot is controlled by only the code that I have written, to consistently do what we want it to do.”

Although all of the practice paid off, as Wood-Surrago was pleased with how the competition turned out for his group and McCallum.

“Last weekend’s competition went perfectly, and every technical aspect went well,” he said. “As for McCallum as a whole I think we did pretty decent, two of the four teams from McCallum made it to the semifinals with one advancing to the finals, my team, and the other two teams did pretty well. One of the teams that just started this year was very successful, being the other team who made it to the semifinals while the other made it to the quarterfinals. So as a school we did great. This year’s competition gives more teams a chance to have a solid chance at being able to be as good as top tier teams.”

Photo by Wren Vanderford.

BACK WITH THE BOTS: During the robotics competition on Saturday, McCallum 2024 graduate, Henry Holmes, who is now a freshman at UTSA, helped referee matches. Holmes was a scoring referee and scored each alliance’s points, at the end of the match, to determine the winner.

“It was very interesting to be back,” he said. “I was very happy to see all of the people that are still participating both at McCallum and on other teams. Being separated from the anxiety of competing also helped me talk with teams from a grounded perspective and enjoy my time there more.”

Holmes noticed many strengths in the McCallum teams and robotics members which helped them succeed in matches.

“The McCallum teams that did well seemed to know what they were best at and how their strategies would fit in with their alliance partner,” he said. “In the semifinals, while the sophomores had a less refined bot than an opposing team, they were able to overcome this and make it to the finals through their strategy and teamwork with their alliance.”

Eventually, as the results were announced, and teams like McCallum’s B team placed second, Holmes is looking forward to seeing how the teams improve and place throughout the season.

“Maybe McCallum will see a fourth year in a row of going to the world championship,” he said.

Photo by Lillian Gray.

PIT STOP: Freshman Marshall Nink works on his team’s robot in between matches. Nink is a member of the D team and like other teams, had to deal with tweaking the robot to make it better adapt to gameplay they faced.

“We were charging the battery and filling of an air tank for hydraulics but the main maintenance we were doing was making a better way for us to collect rings then we had been using,” he said.

Since this was Nink’s first time competing against other schools this season, he worked to find a strategy that worked for him and his team.

“Some rules were that you can’t push a robot into a corner forever and in the last 15 seconds of the match, you can’t touch any of the rings in the corners,” he said. “Something that I had to keep in mind while controlling the robot was that I wanted to keep my opponent from collecting rings and putting them on a stake and moving it into the corners where the points can double.”

This was the D teams first competition of the season and allowed members like Nink to have insight on future competition and challenges ahead.

“The competition has probably been the most fun so far this year,” he said. “I have really loved learning about how to make the robots and how they work.”

Photo by Lillian Gray.

This story was originally published on The Shield Online on December 17, 2024.