Over the course of a year, nearly 24,000 teams, 1 million primary, secondary and university students across the globe tinkered away at robotics designs, competing in regional and state tournaments to see whose bot could stack the most cubes or place the most objects in a bucket.
The excitement grew as the competition narrowed into the lead-up to the Robotics Education & Competition (REC) Foundation’s VEX Robotics World Championship. However, by then, the novel coronavirus had begun spreading, forcing teams to stay home.
“Devastating is not too strong of a word,” Dan Mantz, CEO at REC Foundation, told NTX Inno. “It really put us in a tough place because we knew how disappointed the students were going to be, how hard they worked. But at the end of the day, the health of the students and the health of the volunteers was most important so we knew we would need to cancel.”
However, like many businesses during the current crisis, REC Foundation decided to get creative. This year, the Greenville-based nonprofit held its first ever Fantasy Robotics Tournament, taking data from the teams’ performances over the course of regional competitions and put them head-to-head virtually using algorithms.
“What was really, really, neat was when we released the match schedule these teams were virtually reached out to teams they would have been playing with or playing against just like they would have done at VEX World,” Mantz said. ‘It really fosters communication. That part of the competition where you interface, and you interact with teams from all over we were able to preserve that it was really neat to see.”
And though the future is uncertain, REC Foundation is looking to bring the VEX Robotics World Championship to Dallas live next year.
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“Obviously, we still have a lot of challenges ahead of us for the next few months, but I really believe by April next year we will be able to have the VEX World Championship,” Mantz said.
REC Foundation started about 10 years ago, after spinning out of the educational division of fellow Greenville-based robotic solutions provider VEX Robotics, which was launched in 2004. VEX Robotics is a portfolio company of Innovation First International. Since then, REC Foundation has been using VEX’s products to propel its mission of increasing student interest in STEM through hands-on learning and host competitions. The nonprofit also has programs for drones, manufacturing and AI, among others.
Mantz said getting students interested in STEM is not only important to help them land jobs in the future workforce, whether that be through university or trade training, but it also helps supply the global economy with an educated, problem-solving talent pool. He also added that with teams across the globe, cross-cultural communication helps to break down barriers and stereotypes
“The robot is just a tool to give students more STEM skills, but more importantly is they’re developing those soft skills and that’s what we do most communications, problem-solving, collaboration, teamwork those are what our program really does,” Mantz said. “The STEM challenge that we have is not just a U.S. problem, it’s a global problem. Automation, robotics, it's growing everywhere, so there’s all these countries, all these educational needs to give these students these opportunities.”
The VEX Robotics World Championships are broken down into three categories, based on grade level. At this year’s virtual competition, middle school and higher students were tasked with moving cubes to different buckets, while defending against their opponent. For the younger grades, there is more teamwork than competition as they were tasked with stacking cubes and balls on top of each other. Teams from the U.S. swept the competition.
At the end of every championship, the next year’s tournament task is announced. This year, the upper grades will be playing a tic-tac-toe-like game, but with the opportunity to steal spaces from opponents. Younger grades will be focusing on using their bots to stack risers, with more points going to height than length.
Over the course of the year, REC Foundation’s 48 full-time and 35 part-time staff, along with a squad of volunteers, will host thousands of smaller competitions around the world, whittling it down until the championships in Dallas next April.
In the meantime, Mantz said REC Foundation will be adding to its educational programs and looking for future partnerships to expand its mission, including with local organizations like Dallas and Garland ISD, as well as the local chapter of the Girl Scouts of America.
“You could sit in a classroom and you could learn about robotics and you could learn about gears and… programming, or you can actually have robots in front of you… that’s where the fun really kicks in,” Mantz said. “Automation and robotics are here to stay, it’s going to become more and more integrated in our day to day life. When you come to a VEX Robotics competition you see students really collaborating and cooperating no matter what their backgrounds are, and I think that’s how we’re also changing the world.”
