Los Altos Hills (CA) Teens Help Robotics Team Win World Title At The VEX High School World Robotics Championship

“Three … two … one … Go!” The horn sounded. It was the final match at the VEX High School World Robotics Championship in Dallas, and in two minutes, two teams would be crowned the world champions.

Los Altos Hills brothers Alexander and Timur Dayanov stood on one side of the match table with their Bay Area-based team, Barcbots Getting There, and their alliance team, Capten from South Dakota. On the other side stood their opponents: WE from Chinese Taipei and Happy Haystacks from Virginia. The objective: have the two combined teams – four robots total – collect and throw as many yellow discs as possible into their respective goals.

For the first 15 seconds, no one drove the robots; they collected and threw discs on their own into the goals to accumulate points. Then, the teams began driving.

The robots rushed across the match table, collecting discs and depositing them into their goals. One minute and 45 seconds passed. Points were tallied, and the results were announced: Barcbots Getting There and Capten won 189-169.

“As soon as the score on the really huge TV screen appeared, we all got really excited,” said 14-year-old Alexander, an incoming ninth-grader at Pinewood School, who drove the robot. “We all were jumping and yelling – just being crazy.”

The team competed at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center April 25-27, with 811 teams from 47 countries congregating. The teams – which qualified for worlds after previously winning their regional and state tournaments – were split into 10 divisions. Barcbots Getting There won their division, so the team advanced to the final elimination bracket. After winning the final elimination bracket, they were deemed the world champions.

Yet they didn’t achieve their victory alone. Because the game involved two teams competing against two other teams, Barcbots Getting There formed an alliance with the team Capten from Harrisburg, S.D. – an alliance Timur believed “would complement us well.”

“The understanding of strategy, for both of us, was on the same page,” said 17-year-old Timur, a junior at Stanford Online High School, who co-led the team and helped design and build the robot. “We understood what each robot needed to do.”

Timur said his biggest takeaway from the experience was the “team cohesion,” which involved “being able to work with other people, being open to their ideas, not having massive infighting within ourselves – like a lot of other teams sometimes do – and understanding each other.”

Not long after the championship, the brothers visited U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna in his office to receive a Special Congressional Recognition.

The power of practice

The championship was the last stepping stone in a process that began in late July. Timur recalled the team conducting immense amounts of research and testing to build a robot that was simple in design but could “maximize its performance.”

“One thing with a simple robot is that even if a few pieces are bent or damaged, it still works,” Alexander said. “I think that’s actually what helped us win.”

Timur added that ultimately, the most rewarding part of the entire process was “seeing the culmination of all your effort” and “seeing it work as you intended – sometimes even better than you intended.”

Alexander noted that the experience taught him the importance of “practice, practice, practice.” He said that driving the robot almost daily allowed him to “(understand) the robot a lot more,” as well as the game.

Timur said the process taught him to “keep going.”

“You keep thinking about it and trying to work on it, and eventually, you’ll get there,” he said.

Indeed, the idea of feeling like they were “getting there” inspired their team name – Barcbots Getting There.

“Commentators were really playing around with the name, saying, ‘Barcbots Getting There – will they get there? ... Barcbots Getting There – got there,’” Alexander recalled.

And the brothers hope they will “get there” again next year. The team is already planning for next year’s world championship, and they hope to make an impact.

“We try to stand out at any tournament that we go to,” Timur said. “That’s our main thing: just to be a positive influence and show everyone what you can do.”

For more information on VEX, visit tinyurl.com/mr2dwtdx.

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