The Vex Robotics Championship has been taking place since 2021 in the US state of Texas. This year, four students from Lycée Aline Mayrisch made the trip to showcase their abilities in robotics. They earned their spot by winning at the national level and represented Luxembourg at the championship as Team “Delulu”.
The team members are Lea, Sally, Carolina, and Ishak. Some of them went to school on weekends to work on their project, dedicating a lot of their free time to build a robot that met all the required conditions.
At the championship, their robot has to complete a series of tasks. One of the challenges involves the robot placing rings – referred to as “donuts”– onto a pole called the “goal”. The goal must be firmly attached to the robot so the donuts can be stacked on it. These elements often bring unexpected difficulties, as Lea explains:
“Mainly, it’s that a new problem pops up every time. Just when we think we’ve solved something, a new issue appears.”
Part of their participation also involved maintaining a digital notebook – a document where every step, procedure, and even the smallest update was recorded.
Activities like these are a great complement to theoretical classes, says Philippe Kirsch, teacher at Lycée Aline Mayrisch. Here, theory is applied – both in programming and in the physical construction of the robot. He sees it as a valuable opportunity for students to grow and further develop their interests in this field.
Within the team, the students have different roles: Lea is the team captain and driver, meaning she operates the robot. Sally wrote the code. Together with Carolina and Ishak, they all took on the role of builder, working on assembling the robot.
Over 2,000 teams compete in the event, hailing from the USA and around 60 other countries. Each team brings their own robot, with everyone getting the same materials to build their machine. For the functional parts, no other materials were allowed, but for decorations, teams were free to design and create their own.
