Notre Dame students will be competing against 150 teams from around the world.
Twenty students from Notre Dame who participate in the VEX IQ Challenge segment of school robotics competitions are heading to Louisville, Kentucky, this week to compete in the 2016 VEX Worlds, which, according to its sponsors, brings together top robotics teams in the VEX IQ Challenge, VEX Robotics Competition, and VEX U under one roof to “celebrate their accomplishments and participate with the best teams from around the world.”
According to Louise Palardy, who along with her husband, Jerry, helps mentor Notre Dame’s teams, there will be more than 70 people from the Notre Dame community traveling Wednesday to Louisville.
“There will be a total of 150 teams in the younger divisions, and we will have four ‘Bumble-Bees’ teams down there,” Palardy said. “Teams in this division will come from all over the United States as well as Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Columbia, China, South Korea, Egypt, India, Malaysia, Paraguay and Ethiopia.”
Notre Dame’s teams qualified for ‘Worlds’ by virtue of their performances at the state championship in late February. Team #3333Z (Sharp Shooterz) are 6th- and 7th-grade boys who won the state Middle School Design Award; team #3333S (The Stingers) are 3rd-grade girls who won on programming skills; team #3333A are 5th-grade boys who won the elementary school design award; and team #3333J are 4th-grade boys who won the elementary school excellence award, which was the highest award given on overall program.
“We have won the elementary school excellence award three years in a row,” Palardy noted. “And it’s only our VEX IQ team’s third year of competition.
Palardy said the Notre Dame teams will have 10 qualification matches after which they are randomly assigned a partner who they have to communicate with to develop a strategy to get the highest combined score.
“Each team also will have robot skills matches where their robot will be the only robot on the field to see how well they perform on their own,” she said. “This is also done with programming skills where the students have to program the robot to perform an autonomous routine to score points.”
In addition to matches, each team at “Worlds” has been working on a STEM research project and presentation, which they will present to a group of judges and answer questions from the judges on their chosen topic.
Also, throughout the season, each team maintains an engineering design notebook, which serves as a working document detailing team members’ use of their design process, and will be turned in the judges for review. Teams also will be interviewed by judges on the engineering principles associated with their robot design, their knowledge of the design process, and how they work together.
Palardy especially wanted to thank all of the teams’ sponsors: D1 Solutions, Benchworks, DMF Bait, BOS Automotive, NDIA, Schneider National, Provident Homes, Believe Foundation, Tenbac-Graphion, Plastic Molding Development, Joseph and Carol Mazzeo, Ken Rogers and The Medilogic Group.
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About Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy
Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy is a private, Catholic, independent, coeducational day school located in Oakland County. The school's upper division enrolls students in grades nine through twelve and has been named one of the nation's best 50 Catholic high schools (Acton Institute) four times since 2005. Notre Dame's middle and lower divisions enroll students in jr. kindergarten through grade eight. All three divisions are International Baccalaureate "World Schools." The Marist Fathers and Brothers sponsor NDPMA's Catholic identity and manages its educational program. Notre Dame is accredited by the National Association of Independent Schools, the Independent Schools Association of the Central States and the North Central Association Commission on Accreditation and School Improvement. For more on Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy, visit the school's home page at www.ndpma.org.