BECKLEY, WV (LOOTPRESS) – The robotics team at West Virginia University Institute of Technology (WVU Tech) is one of the top teams in the world and has secured its spot to compete at the VEX World Championship in April.
This past weekend, the Tech VEX Robotics team, called WVUTE1, went undefeated and won the top three awards – the excellence award, tournament champion, and skills award- at the VEX Robotics Tournament competition in Fairmont, West Virginia. The event attracted many high-performing teams from the Northeast United States and Canada.
Alexander Franck, team leader, founder of the robotics club, and junior mechanical engineering major from South Charleston, West Virginia, said he’s very excited and proud of the team.
“Winning the top three awards – the triple crown – that’s a very difficult task,” Franck says.
The team scored an astonishing total of 192 points in the individual team skills event, placing them in 11th globally and 4th among all U.S. teams after their competition in Fairmont. The team is currently ranked 13th globally.
This skills score put them ahead of many large schools, such as the University of Florida, the University of Louisville, Tennessee Tech, and Auburn University, teams they lost to at the Bots at Bristol, Tennessee, in a previous competition.
“At Fairmont, we played against RIT (Rochester Institute of Technology in New York) and they’re really, really good,” Franck commented. “We’ve beaten a lot of big schools like Virginia Tech and Ohio State.”
The top 100 teams in the world qualify to compete at the VEX World Robotics Competition in St. Louis, Missouri.
The first competition of their season took place on WVU Tech’s campus in February, and Franck says they’ve only improved since then.
“We were close to being ready then, but we were not exactly where we wanted to be. The competition at Virginia Tech was a week later. That made all the difference,” he said.
Franck started the robotics club team in his freshman year at Tech. He was involved in VEX Robotics competitions in high school and wanted to continue in college.
“There aren’t as many restrictions in college as there are in high school. You get to do a lot more stuff, like 3-D print parts. I like the university competition a lot more,” Franck explains.
There are currently eleven members of the club, but Franck said the interest is growing and he expects more students to join the club next year. Students range from electrical engineering and mechanical engineering majors to computer science majors, but anyone can join.
“We’re expecting to rank a lot higher during the World Championships. There’s a lot of commitment to the team, which is nice. We put in a lot of work. Being a much bigger team than in years past really helps us in competition,” Franck said. “I think we’re going to be very successful at the World Championship. But next year, we’re going to be even better than this year, and we’ll be the team to beat.”
