The first VEX Robotics competition for many of the teams from NHS took place Nov. 21, in the STEM building at the UW-Oshkosh Fox Cities Campus.

“Robotics is a good stress reliever, a good place I can go and forget about everything else, and It’s fun to incorporate ideas into the final design,” senior Will Foucault a member of Team 6219X said.

Students who join the robotics program at Neenah are split into small groups of a few students.  Students play a pivotal role in how the season will go for their team. The workload is divided amongst teammates with some competitors building the robot and some competitors writing the code that will allow the robot to function as intended. After a team prepares their robot, they head off to bi-weekly competitions.

According to the Chicago Daily Herald, this year’s competition is called Tower Takeover; a game where two teams consisting of two robots each face off in a battle to see which team can build a taller tower in a given amount of time. Students from different schools must work together and practice good communication and teamwork skills in order to out-score the opposition and win the match.

Furthermore, VEX Robotics competitions change annually to regularly provide a new challenge for the high school engineers. Past games have included scoring mechanics such as climbing up platforms, and shooting balls, as well as many other tasks that are intended to challenge a competitor’s science, technology, engineering and math abilities. According to VEX Robotics, its program is built on the pillars of “bold creativity, iteration, and quality.”

Anyone interested in attending a VEX Robotics event can find scheduling and location information at RobotEvents.com.