April marks the start of the Vex Robotics Competition. This is a challenging competition for young individuals in middle school, high school, and college. This competition is described as: “teams of students are tasked with designing and building a robot to play against other teams in a game-based engineering challenge.”
Over ten thousand teams from 32 countries play in over 750 tournaments for this competition. This is a great opportunity for young people to learn life-long critical thinking, and team-work skills.
The competitions motto is “We create tools that educators and mentors will use to shape the learners of today into the problem solving leaders of tomorrow.”
Keeping kids interested in STEM can be challenging, but the Vex Robotics Competition is a great way of getting kids involved in STEM activities. STEM is a term used to combine science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Through this competition, students of different abilities are able to create affordable and accessible robotics and be recognized for their accomplishments.
This competition even has a unique story of how it started. At the beginning of their careers, Tony Norman, an Electrical Engineer, and Bob Mimlitch, a Mechanical Engineer met. Both Norman and Mimlitch realized they had a unique approach to robotics while mentoring high school students.
According to their website, “They don’t believe that “we’ve always done it this way” or “this is how everyone does it” is ever a justification for a solution. They value creative approaches to problem solving; not just in engineering design but in all aspects of business. They are often able to find simple and elegant solutions by focusing on creativity early in the design process.”
Vex Robotics was even founded in Tony Norman’s garage in Greenville, Texas. Since then, both Tony and Bob have employed over 300 people, they have three district divisions and nine offices worldwide. The founders stand by the philosophy that hard work and passion will bring success.
Teams competing in this competition from all over the United States have asked us to create buttons for them. These teams include Community High School Team 5708, The Iron Mustangs Team 3711, The Doomsday Dogs Team 7041, The AZ Tech Eagles Team 4680, and The M Robotics Team 8110. Everyone Loves Buttons is very proud of all the teams competing in the Vex Robotics Competition and wish them all the best of luck in their robotic endeavors!
The information in this blog was provided by www.vexrobotics.com