VEX World Championship

Performance Report

By: Eduardo Rodríguez (Captain) & Charlie Pérez (Co-Captain)

The VEX U World Championship consisted of 60 teams, representing colleges from all around the world. These 60 teams were divided in two divisions; Research and Design, each one with 30 teams. All teams within one division would play 10 qualification matches. Each match consisted of 45 seconds of autonomous period and 1 minute and 15 seconds of driver control. Thenceforth, the best 8 teams would play elimination round to determine the division champion. Afterward, the winner of each division played against each other for the World Championship. AON-R participated under the Research Division.

 

AON-R demonstrated a strong performance during qualification matches. For each match we had to implement a different strategy, depending on the skills the other team presented. We played 2 matches against undefeated teams, winning the two of them. One of these two matches, against NAR (Florida, United States), had a final score of 211-205. This match claimed to be one of the most interesting to watch during the tournament. After the second day of competition, AON-R managed to win against three of the best teams and have a record of 8 wins and zero losses. During the third and final day of competition, we lost our first match against QCC2 (2015 World Champion). Also, we lost a second match against XDRV. After all qualification matches, our team finished in the 3rd position with an 8-2 record and ready to play the best teams during elimination round.

 

AON-R played three rounds during elimination rounds: Quarter Finals, Semi Finals and Division Finals. The first team to win two matches acquired a position in the next round. First we played the quarterfinals against TCMG (Camargo, Chihuahua, Mexico) wining the first two matches of the series 194-112 & 227-212. Afterwards, we played semifinals against IFT (West Heaven, Connecticut). We were excited to play this team, since they won us a practice match (does not count for record) 282-242 in the very beginning of the competition. After determining that we needed a defensive strategy against this team, we managed to win two matches in a row, 262-224 and 176-136 and obtain a pass to the division finals. We played the finals against UTGZ3 (Gutierrez Zamora, Veracruz, Mexico). We managed to win autonomous period against the best team in our division, something hard to achieve, but we ended up losing two matches 257-201 and 280-161. Definitely, they had strong robots; great drivers and our team could not be more satisfied with the team’s performance. Consequently, AON-R won the Division Finalist Award, first time a team from Puerto Rico achieve such accomplishment in the college division.

 

Now our team is positioned in the best four teams in the world ranking. AON-R is already looking forward to the next challenge, wanting to move up in the world ranking.

 

First Match 1 Match1