Students reset VEX Nothing But Net field using RoboDawg ball racks
VEX field with setup racks.
Ball Rack to aid in resetting the Nothing But Net Field
Grandville High School and Grandville Middle School robotics teams compete each year in the VEX Robotics program. This yea, VEX has released an exciting new game – “Nothing But Net”. The game is great run – and it involves more than 100 foam balls. Forty of these balls must be stacked in four-ball pyramids each time the field is set up for play. This summer the teams found that resetting the VEX field between rounds was very time-consuming.
A RoboDawg freshman and her dad, Elisa LaBarge and Bill LaBarge) came up with an ingenious solution to the field resetting challenge – a custom ball rack. Much like the rack used on a pool table, these plastic triangles make arranging a set of ball much faster. Using a set of ten of these racks to set up the field, RoboDawg teams posted average field reset times under 50 seconds during the end-of-camp tournament. After camp, Elisa worked with a team sponsor (Machine Guard & Cover) to refine the design for the custom ball rack and to arrange for manufacturing of large quantities of these racks.
Teams and tournament hosts can now purchase a set of ten reset racks on the RoboDawgs’ online store. Here’s the link: http://mkt.com/grandville-robodawgs
For more information on the VEX Nothing But Net game, follow this link:http://www.roboticseducation.org/vex-robotics-competitionvrc/current-game/
To learn more about Machine Guard & Cover, visit their website: http://machineguard.com/
