Massey wins Vex world champsMassey wins Vex world champs

A Massey team has won the university section of the Vex Robotics World Championships in Orlando, Florida.

Vex Robotics involves teams designing, building and maintaining robots that compete in a game called Round Up in which the robots stack rings on goal posts. Points are awarded for “owning” a goal while bonus points are given if the robot can also hang off a central ladder.

The event drew more than 10,000 intermediate school, high school and university participants representing 16 countries.

Massey’s team, Kiwibots, was unbeaten throughout the competition and was also awarded the supreme award of excellence, given to the team with the most well-rounded robotics programme.

Team captain Maurice Tipene says the team is exhausted but happy. “We were pretty comfortable this time, last year we were pretty stressed out and our robots weren’t quite working right,” he says. “This year, we didn’t have to do anything to the robots and we did good.”

A number of New Zealand high school teams also competed at the event. Free Range Robotics won its division but was beaten in the quarter-finals, while Lynfield College lost in the division final.

Next year’s robotics competition game Gateway was also unveiled at the tournament. The object of the game is to attain a higher score than your opponent by picking up coloured balls and barrels and placing them in circular goalposts of varying heights.