Last spring, 13 members of the 95071 VEX Robotics team began preparing for their annual summer program, an effort they mostly use to recruit and train aspiring and incoming members.
The program, which occurred from July 18 to Aug. 7 at school , was initially designed to cover basic and advanced skills for VEX robotics as well as to help fund VEX throughout the school year.
In the span of three weeks, more experienced members hosted a total of four programs and taught essential elements like computer-aided design (CAD), engineering notebook construction, hardware and software.
Senior Richard Lee, the captain of VEX and the hardware program mentor, was one of the hosts. “Often, a lot of middle schoolers want to join the robotics teams, but sometimes others have an edge because they’ve already done camps and picked up the basics,” Lee said. “The VEX summer program is really meant to give everyone a foundation in STEM so they’re ready to jump in when they join teams at SHS or Redwood.”
The notebook program, hosted from July 31 to Aug. 1, offered strategies for effective documentation with a notebook. Each team’s notebook serves as a detailed, chronological record of a team’s engineering design process, including ideas, designs and build logs.
A CAD program offered two sessions: one from July 18-20 and the other from July 27-28. CAD is the use of computer software to create, modify and optimize a design. The program covered rudimentary parts of a robot and their use, providing students with the necessary knowledge to design a robot digitally.
The hardware program, hosted from July 21-25, also introduced parts and tools of a robot. Additionally, it taught critical building and designing techniques of a physical robot.
Lastly, the software program, from July 28 to Aug. 1 and Aug. 4-7, introduced important concepts in VEX programming, from C++ syntax to proportional integral derivative (PID) control loop algorithms.
In total, 10 students attended each hardware and software program; 12 students for the CAD program; and four students for the notebook program.
Although there were a sufficient number of sign-ups to host the program, Lee believes the club could have started advertising earlier to attract more students, as they hadn’t officially advertised through social media until a week or two before the start of program.
Lee also believes that the hardware program could have been improved by extending the course length. They designed the curriculum to teach more concepts than the actual amount of time they had.
“As we create the curriculum entirely by ourselves each year, the hardware program wasn’t able to cover much of the curriculum we hoped to cover,” Lee said. “In addition, students were meeting for five days in 4-hour segments, which wasn’t sufficient to finish the curriculum. Students also started getting distracted.”
Freshman Jake He, leader of the software program, realized some students found the advanced material toward the end of the software program challenging, since it required a strong math background.
For example, some students struggled to understand the tracking algorithm, which uses sensors to help robots figure out where they are, since it involves complex calculations based on sensor data.
“Next year, the club might redesign the curriculum to teach the prerequisites for students who don’t have a lot of programming knowledge to understand more challenging concepts, while more advanced students can learn the more complicated aspects of programming,” He said.
Despite the challenge and hardships VEX members faced while designing the curriculum, Lee believes the club reached their initial goal of introducing students to robotics.
“The majority of the students learned essential robotics skills and could further develop these skills in their respective teams, which I think is the most important goal that we accomplished,” Lee said.
Freshman Dylan Peng, who attended the software program, felt that the camp established a friendly environment for him to join the high school VEX team.
“I learned how to build a robot based on the robot C++ language, and I believe the club allowed me to approach robotics in an easier method, motivating me to ultimately join the high school robotics team,” Peng said.
