Last month, the Exit 6 Robotics Team #62228A, which includes Livingston High School and Heritage Middle School students, competed at the Monroe Township Spin Up Qualifier and advanced to NJ State Championships. The Spin Up competition is this season’s VEX Robotics Competition (VRC) game with over 11,500 teams in 40 countries worldwide. Competing against 34 other teams at this qualifier, the Exit 6 Robotics finished the regular competition rounds in 4th place with a 4-1 record, qualifying them as an Alliance Captain for the single-elimination finals rounds. The team won all their finals round matches to leave them with a 1st place 8-1 record and the Tournament Champions Award.

In VRC, teams form alliances to compete on a 12ft x 12ft playing field against other alliance teams to score the most points in a 2 minute robot match. This year’s “Spin Up” game challenges teams to build a robot that will collect discs from the playing field to shoot them into hanging goals.

With Exit 6 Robotics forming only in late November, the team entered their 1st competition in December after only 3 weeks and were at a competitive disadvantage to teams that had been working on their robots for 6 months. In the 12 weeks since their inception, team members have stepped up to rapidly learn valuable skills in teamwork, design, programming, and engineering.

With each competition, the team clawed their way up the rankings, finishing in the bottom 40% at their 1st competition, upper 28% at their 2nd event, 17% at their 3rd event, and finally finishing with the Tournament Champions Award at their 4th event on Feb 11. The team is worked hard to prepare for the VRC State Championships, from which eight teams qualified for VRC World Championships to be held in late-April in Dallas, TX.

Livingston students from the team include HMS 8th grader Wesley Yang, LHS 10th graders Ryan Lam, Arya Deshmukh and Alex Yang, and LHS 11th graders Aalok Dhurandhar, Alan Hu, Varun Sohal and Tyrus Yung.