2023 - 2024 Season: Over Under
During my first season of VEX Robotics in sophomore year, I joined with limited programming experience and no prior robotics background. Despite that, our team made school history by qualifying for the Illinois State Tournament for the first time. I developed a program that records driver movements and replays them during the autonomous period, a key innovation that developed my programming skills and helped us compete at a higher level.
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I also participated in the Virtual Skills Challenge, where I ranked highly worldwide and became a finalist (top 5 globally) for the Virtual Skills Video Challenge — and the only U.S. team among the finalists.
Virtual Skills Challenge
The Virtual Skills Challenge was my first introduction to VEX Robotics in my engineering class. Using the online VEX simulator, I learned the fundamentals of robot programming—writing code to move, score, and complete objectives in a virtual environment. This experience helped me understand motion control, timing, and strategic planning before I ever touched a real robot.
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As I improved, I optimized my code to achieve a high-ranking global score and submitted a video explaining my approach for the Virtual Skills Award. My submission was selected as a finalist (top 5 in the world), and our team was the only U.S. representative among them.
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This experience sparked my passion for robotics programming and gave me the confidence to take on real-world challenges in the Over Under season.
Coding Physical Robots
After learning the basics through Virtual Skills, I began programming our team’s first physical robot for the Over Under season. Transitioning from simulation to real hardware introduced new challenges—sensor calibration, motor control, and consistent autonomous routines were no longer theoretical but physical systems that required precision and testing.
I started out using VEXcode’s block-based interface, but as I grew more confident, I transitioned to PROS with Visual Studio Code, learning C++ to gain greater control and flexibility over the robot. Along the way, I also began using Git and GitHub to manage version control, experiment safely with new features, and collaborate more effectively with my teammates.
Autonomous Driver Replay System
One of the biggest challenges that season was developing an autonomous routine for our robot. With limited experience in path planning or odometry, I looked for creative ways to make our robot consistent during the 15-second autonomous period.
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The inspiration came when my coach mentioned that a former student once tried to create a system that could record driver movements and replay them autonomously, but had graduated before finishing the code. That idea stuck with me—and I decided to bring it to life.
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Using PROS, I built a system that logged joystick inputs and motor outputs in real time during driver control. The program saved these values and later replayed them in autonomous mode, effectively reproducing a routine without manual coding for every movement.
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This approach not only simplified autonomous development but also taught me how to handle data logging, playback timing, and motor synchronization—concepts far beyond what I had expected to learn in my first season.
Illinois State Tournament
Our efforts culminated in qualifying for the Illinois State Tournament—the first in school history for our team.
Initially, I had experimented with a system to record and replay driver movements during autonomous, inspired by a former student, but this approach proved impractical for consistent performance on the real field.
Instead, I implemented PID-controlled motion using the EZ-Template library, which allowed the robot to follow precise paths with repeatable accuracy. By the time of State, these routines performed reliably during matches and helped our team compete at a high level.
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Looking back, this first season was a major learning experience. I gained hands-on knowledge of robot programming, testing, and iteration, learned to work effectively with hardware and teammates, and saw firsthand how coding and engineering combine to achieve real results. It was a season of growth, problem-solving, and milestones that set the foundation for all of my future VEX Robotics work.