Students participate in new VEX Program
For the first time, Peninsula has created two VEX Robotics teams, which design and build robots to compete at competitions. The Peninsula VEX teams were introduced by sophomores Saahil Parikh, Robert Peltekov and RJ Wakefield-Carl.
“I started doing VEX Robotics as a sixth grader at Miraleste [Intermediate School], and I wanted to continue it in high school,” Peltekov said. “Towards the end of the last school year, we started recruiting people by asking all the engineering classes to join, and when we got enough students to form a team, we started to have meetings.”
There are currently two teams: 3050A, comprised of sophomores, and 3050B, which consists of freshmen. Sophomore Lauren Kong is on Team 3050A, and although she joined with no previous experience, she has learned many skills in just a couple of months.
“Everything was completely new to me,” Kong said. “However, with the help of my teammates and our adviser, I was able to learn a lot about engineering, programming and robotics.”
Engineering teacher and adviser of the VEX teams Hassan Twiet has spent his summer, after-school hours and weekends helping the students.
“We started training and building the robots the students would take to competition during the summer around July,” Twiet said.
Students build their robots based on the competition, or “game,” topic. This year’s topic is called Starstruck, and the objective of the game is to use a robot to launch stars and cubes into their designated zones for a certain number of points. In a match, there are 24 stars and four cubes available which must be launched into either the near zone or the far zone. A star catapulted into the near zone earns one point while a cube earns two. In the far zone, stars score two points while cubes score four. The higher the number of points, the higher that team is ranked.
“To prepare for the competition, our team builds and prepares a robot that will play the year’s chosen game given by the host company VEX,” Peltekov said. “We have been working on the robots ever since the game topic came out in July and have continued working on them every week since then.”
Building and programming robots is a long and difficult process, but the VEX teams believe seeing the rewards of their hard work is worthwhile.
“We meet on Thursdays during lunchtime and Saturdays for about five to six hours to work on building, programming and improving our team’s robot,” Kong said. “Although it is very time-consuming, making sure everything is functioning right helps us be more prepared for our competitions.”
On Oct. 29, Peninsula’s two teams took their robots to the North San Diego Regional competition and won first place for design and second place overall.
“For the first year and first competition, I feel that we did really well and that we have a lot more in store for the future,” Peltekov said. “Our next competition is on Nov. 19 and I am really looking forward to it.”
