For the 2025-2026 VEX V5 Robotics Competition (V5RC) season, a new VEX V5 STEM Lab was created to guide teams to getting started with V5RC Push Back. The Competition 101: V5RC Push Back STEM Lab is designed to guide teams and coaches from their first team meetings to their first V5RC event, offering a framework for building, documenting, strategizing, and iterating on a robot for competition.
Getting started with robot design involves more than just the pieces in your Kit. The Competition 101 STEM Lab offers a place for teams and their coaches to get comfortable with the game and the Hero Bot and learn about its capabilities and limitations in an intentional way. That way, they can iterate on their robot design strategically - trying out design ideas that align with their driving skills, game strategies, and engineering capabilities. The STEM Lab is designed to make this process engaging, fun, and easy to implement, while setting teams up for success throughout the season!
The Unit enables teams and coaches to get up and running exploring V5RC Push Back from their very first team meeting. Session 1: Getting Started with Your Team focuses on introducing the game through Virtual Driving Skills and setting team expectations.
Sessions 2 and 3 focus on getting started with the Hero Bot, Dex.
In Session 2: Building Your First Robot, teams work through building Dex in stages, as they continue to get acquainted with the rules and scoring of V5RC Push Back.
In Session 3: Driving Your Robot, teams practice driving Dex and collect data about how well they could complete game tasks with different drive configurations.
These two sessions set the stage for students to think strategically about their game play and robot design.
Sessions 4 and 5 shift focus to strategic thinking about the game and Hero Bot.
In Session 4: Creating Your First Strategy, teams work through a process to test and develop strategies based on collected data.
In Session 5: Improving Your Robot, teams learn about a process for making, testing, and documenting incremental changes to a robot's design in order to improve its performance. This session was created to offer teams a starting point for approaching robot design, so they are set up to be successful as they learn about iterating with intention. Teams learn about the value of data-based decision making in robot design, so that they can improve their robot with the same strategic thinking they applied to strategy development and driving skills.
The remaining sessions prepare teams for attending and then reflecting on their first V5RC competition day. Session 6: Practicing for a V5RC Match familiarizes teams with the structure of a V5RC match and introduces them to the Competition Template. Session 7: Preparing for Your First Competition, walks teams and coaches through a "dress rehearsal" of a V5RC event, so they know what to expect on competition day. Session 8: Reflecting on Your First Competition gives teams a framework for reflecting on their experience and applying what they learned moving forward.
The STEM Lab is designed for coaches and teams to return to previous sessions after their first competition. The goal is to continue learning about how to iterate successfully on driving, strategizing, and robot design together, throughout the rest of the season.
To learn more about implementing the Competition 101 STEM Lab with your team, read this article.