Introduction
This article offers helpful information for those who are just getting started with the 2024-2025 VEX Robotics Competition (V5RC) game, High Stakes. The High Stakes Hero Bot is Axel! This article will cover the purpose of building Axel and the next steps to make the robot your own.
Hero Bots are designed by VEX engineers each year to play the new Competition game, so the Hero Bot design changes from year to year to align with the game design. The 2024-2025 Hero Bot, Axel, is not an end product; rather, Axel is designed as a starting point for you to practice, test, and optimize a robot and refine your game strategy.
The Hero Bot's purpose is to enable new teams to learn valuable building skills and produce a robot they can customize to compete with early in the season. The Hero Bot also allows advanced teams quickly assemble a robot to investigate the game's dynamics.
Regardless of your experience level, use Axel as a starting point to practice playing High Stakes. Determine the robot's strengths and weaknesses and decide how you can strategically modify the robot's design to optimally perform during the High Stakes competition.
Competing can seem intimidating, especially when there are teams who have been competing for many years and have a lot of experience. Through building Axel, you can understand more about the game and what is actually needed for the robot's design. Your confidence will increase as you familiarize yourself with the robot and the rules of the game.
As a newcomer, perusing the High Stakes Game Manual may seem daunting, and it may be hard to envision a robot that performs scoring activities while obeying all the rules. For these reasons, Axel has been designed and offered to everyone, enabling all teams to have the same starting point regardless of experience.
Beginning Robot Design
There is a nearly infinite combination of the parts and connection patterns provided in your VEX V5 Competition Starter Kit. From an engineering standpoint, practically anything is possible when it comes to creating a new robot's structure and mathematical design. Using the objectives of the game, you have to find a precise design formula that will enable you to overcome the challenges that the game presents and maximize how many points you can gain to outscore your competitor. The question that naturally arises with these challenges is, “Where do I start?”
Starting Line
Believe it or not, once you have built Axel and tested the game, you have already started! When beginning to freely-build to modify the robot, be sure to log why and for what purpose you are freely-building. You will most likely find answers to these questions through testing Swish.
Use an engineering notebook to document design constraints found in the Game Manual before you begin to build Axel. Your intentionality here will ensure your team's robot is not disqualified due to an illegal design or prohibited components.
Throughout your engineering notebook, also document all of the changes you make to Axel's design, the results from your testing after each iteration, and any challenges you encounter. Here are some ideas for what you can log in your engineering notebook as you progress:
Make a chart with the goals you want your design to achieve.
Goals could include:
- I want the design collect Rings quickly.
- I want the design to score a High Stake on the Ladder.
- I want the design to push Mobile Goals through tight turns.
Make a chart with the constraints on your design.
Some constraints you may have to consider include:
- The combined power of all motors (11W & 5.5W) must not exceed 88W.
- The robot only can use V5 System parts.
- The robot can only possess 2 rings and 1 Mobile Goal at one time.
Refer to helpful resources, such as the parts poster for your Competition Kit, as you prepare your design.
It is important to document these questions out not only for the sake of remembering them, but also to stay on track. With infinite combinations of connections, it can be hard to remember where you left off or why you started a particular task. Listing your goals and all the limiting factors can help to ensure you create the design you originally wanted.
Design, Create, and Iterate
Knowing your goal and the constraints sets the stage for designing your solution. Before building, it is important to create a plan. Build Instructions offer a very specific and detailed plan for a build. When free building, plans can be looser, but should involve some kind of sketch of what it is that you are trying to build. Practice creating a mental model of your idea, transferring that to paper, then matching your drawing to actual components from the Kit.
Once you have laid out what you want to achieve with your build and the factors directly in between you and that goal, you must find the perfect balance between your constraints and your goals to create what exactly you set out to achieve.
Do not be afraid to try new things! It is important as you experiment with these possible solutions and builds that you do not follow one specific path. With an almost infinite combination of parts in the Kit, there is definitely more than one approach to your problem! Test and iterate on your build to make sure it achieves your goal and still meets your constraints. The entire free building process is loads of fun as it places you in the driver’s seat! Lastly, while this is a competition, it is a friendly competition to say the least.
Visit the VEX Forum and VEX Professional Development Plus (PD+), which has many great resources from other team’s builds! Get inspiration, ask questions, or view solutions to queries already answered by VEX staff, VEX mentors, or VEX enthusiasts!