Oxford High Robotics Team Takes Home Awards

On Thursday, March 28, 14 members of the Oxford High School Robotics Team (the Robocops), hopped on a bus and headed to Rham High School in Hebron, Conn. Coming off of a first place win at the Wolcott Thunderdome Scrimmage against nine other teams in February, the OHS Robotics team wanted to test their skills once more. This time they competed against 24 other high school teams from across the state in the TSA‐VEX Robotics High School Competition 2013. The competition, organized by the CT‐TSA (Connecticut Technology Student Association), was part of the VEX Robotics series of competitions.

This year’s challenge is called sack attack. The competition is played on a 12x12 foot field, and it is divided in half by four troughs and two raised platforms. The bean bags are placed strategically around the field, and each side has two starting points. The teams compete in randomly selected pairs, which put a total of four robots on the field for each round. Although the idea is to score as many points as you can, there is much more strategy involved than just placing bags in troughs. The robots are allowed to cross under the troughs to get to the opponent’s bean bags; they are allowed to knock their opponent’s bean bags out of the troughs; and they are allowed to block their opponents from scoring. To make strategy even more important, there are special points awarded for keeping the score close, which means that sometimes a team may drop bean bags in their opponent’s troughs, just keep the game close.

To no one’s surprise, the Robocops had a very similar outcome at Rham as they did in Wolcott. They won every single qualifying match they were in which kept them ranked number one and number two throughout qualifying matches. They entered the quarter final rounds as the number 2 overall ranked team and unfortunately lost a very close battle in the final round.

Not only did this incredible group of young adults take home the second place trophy, they also took home the Excellence Award for the second time in a row, which is the highest award presented in the VEX Robotics Competition. The Robocops are a shining example of engineering, teamwork and determination.

A huge thank you goes out to our sponsors who helped make this year our best yet: Connecticut Chimney & Vent, T. Arduini Company INC., Combustion Components Associates, Inc., Branson Ultrasonics Corporation, Michael G. Maksymiw, CPA.

The above news release comes from Oxford Technology Education Teacher Gregory Darin.