VALDOSTA — Lowndes High School hosted a VEX Robotics national qualifier on Saturday, Jan. 23, consisting of teams from South Georgia and North Florida.
The VEX Robotics competition is the largest and fastest growing robotics program in the world with thousands of teams from 20 different countries playing in highly competitive tournaments. When the day was done, Lowndes’ teams emerged on top of the leader board, finishing first, second and third and was also winning the Excellence Award (Copeland Felts).
Of the teams competing, Wesley Newton and Dipan Patel finished first place. Finishing second place was the team of Copeland Felts, Paul Yi, Taylor Lamb, and Bobby Wetherington. Finishing in third place were Jack Bounds and Carlos Avila.
Felts, Newton and Patel plan to compete at the VEX Robotics world championships in Texas.
This year's VEX Robotics game is called Clean Sweep. Students, with guidance from their teachers and mentors, aim to build the most innovative robots and work together to obtain the most points possible.
Clean Sweep is played on a 12x12-inch square field divided in half by an 11.5-inch wall. Two alliances, one red and one blue, composed of two teams each, compete in a series of two-minute, 20-second rounds. Each round is divided into two stages. The first stage is the autonomous period, which lasts 20 seconds. During this time, students are expected to program their robots to score as many points as possible without using operator controls.
A bonus in score is awarded to the alliance that scores the most total points at the end of the autonomous period.