What is Vex?

The Vex Robotics Design System ("Vex," for short) is a modular system of erector-set like structural elements, motors, sensors, and micro-controllers that can be used to construct sophisticated robots. Due to modular nature of Vex parts, no prior experience construction experience other than the use of a screw driver, wrench, and a willingness to learn is necessary to construct complex mechanisms.

Due to the great popularity of the Vex with high school and college students, Innovation First has put together a yearly Vex Robotics Competition (VRC), similar to the FIRST Robotics Competitions (FRC) common in high schools. Each year a set of rules and game objects is announced and the best high school and university teams are pitted against one another at the Vex Robotics World Championship, hosted in late April at the Dallas Convention Center.

The 2009-2010 Vex Challenge is "Clean Sweep," the description and rules of which can be found in the "Competition" section of the official Vex Robotics website.

History

RU-Vex, the Rutgers Vex Robotics team, was founded by a group of freshman engineering students in Spring 2009 to compete in the first inaugural Vex College Championship and later joined forces with IEEE Robotics. Three members (Michael Koval, Nitish Thatte, and Jesse Do) travelled to Dallas, TX to represent Rutgers University at the international championship. Rutgers was a semi-finalist and placed eight out of the attending teams. More information about the 2008-2009 "Elevation" challenge can be found in the "Competition" section of the official Vex Robotics website.

Get Involved!

Now is a great time to get involved in the build effort for the 2010 World Championship. Be sure to join the general IEEE Robotics (ieee_robotics) and the "RU-Vex 2010" Sakai page, our primary form of organization. We meet during the Monday IEEE Robotics meeting and have a supplementary Vex-specific Thursday meeting:

General IEEE-Robotics Meeting: 8:15pm Mondays EE-205'

Vex-Specific Meeting: 8:15 Thursdays in EE-205

EE-205 is an undergraduate lab on the second floor of the Electrical Engineering Building on Busch Campus.