VEX Robotics
Competition robot design - Top 5 Switzerland
Robotics / Mechanical Engineering
The story
Every VEX season is the same trap: you can always add one more mechanism, and it will always make the robot less reliable. As captain, most of my job wasn't designing the cleverest robot - it was talking the team out of building it.
Why I built it
The rules, the field, and the clock never move, so a robot that is slightly less ambitious but never breaks mid-match beats one that can theoretically do more.
What I built
We built around a drivetrain and one or two mechanisms we could make bulletproof, then spent the rest of the season on autonomous routines and driver practice instead of chasing new features.
What I did
- Captain and lead engineer
- Designed the drivetrain and the game-specific mechanisms
- Wrote the autonomous routines
- Ran driver practice and match strategy
How I built it
Build flow
Game analysis -> concept design -> prototype -> test -> competition iteration loop.
How it works
The robot paired a simple, reliable drivetrain with a small number of well-tested mechanisms, refined match to match based on what actually broke rather than what looked impressive on paper.
Hardware
Software
What was hard
- Mechanisms that worked in practice but failed under match stress
- Knowing which features to cut when time ran short
- Keeping autonomous routines reliable across different field conditions
Demos and build notes
Results & impact
- ✓ Top 5 in Switzerland in our first competitive year
- ✓ Consistent match performance instead of a robot that only worked in practice
What I'd tell past me
- A robot that does less but never breaks beats one that does more but sometimes doesn't
- Driver practice mattered as much as anything I designed
If I keep going
- Bring the same design-for-reliability mindset into university robotics projects