Drew Geisler, of Long Island, NY, just finished his first year of the IE program, and is a member of ACM SIGBots. VEX Robotics provides educational and competitive robotics products to schools, universities, and robotics teams, with VEX U being for university level students. SIGBots is the Purdue chapter of the parent organization ACM, an umbrella organization for Special Interest Groups (known as SIGs) which specialize in an area of computer science, like mobile applications, artificial intelligence, game development, high performance computing, multimedia, operating systems, security, and more.

Geisler says that being an IE has helped him stay organized and has given him the ability to be able to think of the robot as a product that needs to optimized and automated. "I see every little addition or idea that we could use on our robot as a way to bring us that much closer to having a perfectly efficient robot," he said.

SIGBots won the Feb. 23 regional qualifying tournament for VEX U, hosted at Purdue, and advanced to the VEX Robotics World Championship in Louisville, KY, in April. However, they did not place among the 1,650 teams who participated. But Geisler still sees value in competing.

"I have been doing VEX for 4 years, two of them being here [at Purdue] and two in my high school," said Geisler. "My current role on the team is the Strategy Team lead which is being in charge of general game strategies and documentation of all of our work. I also am in charge of scouting different teams during the competitions to be able to create some counter strategies. Finally I act somewhat as a bridge to mechanics and software sub-teams to try and get the most efficient robot in the shortest amount of time."

"For each VEX U, each team actually has to field two robots - one being at most 24" and the other being at most 18"," he explained. "The way we have it set up this year we decided that it would be more efficient if we specialized each bot. To do this we have our bigger robot focused on lifting the game objects and playing defense, and the smaller bot is more focused on fielding the balls and shooting them at the targets."

What does he hope is in the future for SIGBots? "Hopefully [to] win the world competition and to keep growing the club!" he said.

Source: Andrew Geisler, ageisle@purdue.edu

Video: BLRS VEX U 2019 Turning Point Worlds Reveal 

VEX Robotics is a leading provider of educational and competitive robotics products to schools, universities, and robotics teams around the world. The VEX IQ and VEX EDR product lines span elementary, middle, and high schools with accessible, scalable, and affordable robotics solutions. Beyond science and engineering principles, a VEX Robotics project encourages teamwork, leadership, and problem solving among groups. It allows educators to easily customize projects to meet the level of students’ abilities as they inspire & prepare the STEM problem-solvers of tomorrow.