VEX Turning Point Turkey Trot Tournament 11/11/2018

Our team competed in the VEX Turning Point Turkey Trot tournament at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Building. This was a combined high school and middle school event and qualified teams for the Virginia State Championship. We participated in 6 different qualifying matches throughout the tournament, and were picked by a higher-ranking team to ally with in the elimination match. At the end of the competition, we ranked 19th out of 30 total teams. We finished with 2 wins, 3 losses, and 1 tie.

This robot comprised of four primary parts: a drive train run on traction wheels, a six-bar lift with a claw, a rubber-band ball intake, and a flywheel ball shooter. These components were our approach towards the Turning Point competition requiring us to flip caps, place caps onto poles, toggle flags by shooting balls, and parking our robot on central and alliance platforms.

The robot we competed with during this competition was our first, and we learned a lot from seeing other robots at the tournament. We were exposed to different approaches teams had made to scoring points, and how they implemented their ideas in their robot's designs. These different and new robotic designs heavily influenced our subsequent robot.