After an impressive regional win, the Morris School Advanced Robotics Club is preparing to compete on the world stage.
The team recently qualified for the 2025 VEX Robotics World Championship following a strong showing at the Red River Valley Regional VEX Robotics tournament held in January in East Grand Forks, Minnesota. The championship runs from May 6–14 in Dallas, Texas and brings together top student teams from around the globe.
Understanding the competition format
At the world championship, the competition includes driver-controlled and autonomous skills runs, along with head-to-head alliance battles.
In the skills portion, teams aim to score as many rings as possible on goal posts, with each ring worth one point and each goal post in a corner worth five points.
Alliance battles follow a different format. Two teams work together to score points by placing rings and runners in the scoring zones. Top runners are worth three points, and each ring is worth one point. Teams can also earn a multiplier by pushing scoring elements into a designated corner or reduce their opponents' score by moving items into a negative zone.
A closer look at their robot
The Morris team's robot was built without welding, using screws, shafts and hand tools—similar to assembling a Meccano set. VEX competition rules also limit the number and type of motors each robot can use.
“You can have eight big motors, but we have five because we also use pneumatics,” explained team member Cody Dueck. “Each big motor is 88 watts, and the smaller ones are 11 watts. So you have to choose where to place them carefully.”
The team also developed a creative solution to strengthen one of the robot’s vulnerable components.
“Our chief engineer, Josh Hildebrandt, noticed the chain kept breaking,” said communications lead Andrew Hildebrandt. “So he took several chains and zip-tied them together to make them stronger. That’s really our most innovative technique so far.”
Representing their school and province
The Morris students are now preparing to represent their school, community, and province at one of the largest student robotics competitions in the world. The event is hosted by the Robotics Education & Competition (REC) Foundation and features the VEX IQ, VEX V5, and VEX U divisions.
-With files from Zack Driedger.