Taipei American School robotics team “Raid Zero J” (4253J) was one of the champions at the Formosa VEX In The Zone Robotics Competition held from Dec. 1-2 at Taipei American School Upper School Gym, which qualifies their team for the VEX World Championships in Louisville, Kentucky from April 25 to May 1, 2018. The team members include Matthew Chiang (‘18), Melissa Pai (‘18), Jonathan Hsu (‘18), Emily Hsu (‘20), and Robert Yang (‘18).
The goal of the competition is to get a higher score than the opposing alliance by stacking as many cones on top of each other with each team’s robots, scoring mobile goals in goal zones and by parking robots. During each round, there are 15 seconds of autonomous bot, and 1 min 45 seconds of driver control. “The programming element of each match, also called the autonomous period, was also especially important, since it results in a 20-point swing that could easily decide the outcome of a match,” says Jonathan. The team had formed alliances with other robotics teams to win the competition, with other tournament champion teams, including ISManila and ISKL Panthers, representing International School of Manila and International School of Kuala Lumpur respectively. Other teams representing TAS include 4253X and “Raid Zero B” (4253B), the latter of which won the Build Award.
Team Raid Zero J co-captain Matthew Chiang (‘18) says, “We haven’t lost a match, though [a challenge was] choosing a third alliance. We had a difficult time choosing a team that complemented our bot.” The team qualified for the finals, ranking first with 110 points in total and won the final round 96 to 64. They were also awarded with the Excellence Award, Robot Skill Winner and Think Award. Team Raid Zero J had also recently competed at the VEX Robotics Competition held at the American School in Japan and attained first place.