For the second year in a row, Guilderland High School Dutchmen Robotics teams will compete in the VEX Robotics State Championship on Mar. 9, 2024, at Queensbury HIgh School. Approximately 70 high school teams and 32 middle school teams are expected to attend the March 9 state championships, where teams can qualify for the world championship event in Dallas, Texas in May 2024.
Since May 2023, four Dutchman Robotics teams have been designing, building, programming and strategizing. As part of this year’s challenge, the GHS teams competed against capital region schools at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and at Queensbury High School.
At the RPI competition, one GHS team won the Judges’ Excellence Award, which qualified them for the state championship. At Queensbury the other three teams qualified for the state championship from points accumulated during matches.
A club at GHS, the Robotics teams design, construct, program, redesign and drive a robot that completes a series of different challenges each year. Robotics teams build their robots from scratch using a computer, a lithium polymer battery, eight motors, wheels, a chain, sprockets, gears, axles and a variety of sensors. The robots must be programed to work autonomously for 15 second and with a controller for one minute, 45 seconds. Students record their successes and failures in an engineering notebook that is reviewed by judges during the competition.
Vex Robotics brings together teams to celebrate STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) and encourages students to question and experiment, while improving their communication, collaboration and time-management skills and preparing students to become future innovators.
Congratulations to the GHS Robotics teams for earning an invitation to the state championship and best of luck in the competition!