Local boys competing on a global stage at VEX Robotics Worlds Competition 

Malia Riggs 

Elmore Autauga News  

The dream team of team 13907F, comprised of Prattville High School’s Jonathan Greer, Mark Sergey and Walton Bear will be the first from Autauga County and the Autauga County Technology Center‘s Engineering Program to head to the VEX Robotics Worlds Competition in Dallas, Texas. This is the largest robotics competition in the world.  

Each individual team member has a different role in competition and building their robot. However, they all work together to complete a common goal, showcasing skills and scoring points in competition.  

Another team in our class has taught us so much about building and coding. there was no way we could’ve gotten this done without them or without learning from the internet, not copying, but just being humble enough to look at other people’s ideas, change them and then apply it to us, that’s the reason we’re so good,” Greer said.  

Sergey, a sophomore, is the primary builder. Meaning he is the one that builds and makes sure their bot is running smoothly and correctly.  

“With the motors and the batteries, they power the brain, which is where the coding is and tells the robot what to do. The basic idea is to try to score as many points as you can and our robot is mainly built around transporting the green triball. But it’s also about making your driver’s job as easy as possible,” Sergey said.  

Bear, a senior, is the driver of the team. Bear and most other teams use a typical video game controller to move the robot on the field in competition.  

“Driving has been pretty straightforward since the start. Over the last couple months we’ve been doing this, getting more comfortable and making changes, driving has become a lot easier. From the beginning we had four motors total and we didn’t have a lot of push power. Now we have six motors, realizing that having more push power was very important to us. We took what we learned in the earlier stages, and it made driving a lot easier,” Bear said.   

Greer, a junior, is the team’s main programmer and documenter. Meaning he makes sure designs, layout and the how’s and the why’s are in the notebook, which is judged in competition. He also tells the brains of the robot what to do through the programming within their robot.  

“We’ve come a long way in our coding, from not knowing how to code to now this. Had to learn a lot of C++ very fast, but it was a good learning experience,” Greer said.  

Part of the competition is an interview process, where the team had virtual interviews last week with judges. Robotics teacher at the Career Tech Center, John Cooper, confirmed that three of the six judges were from foreign countries. 

“This is the first team in our school’s history and Autauga County history to qualify for Worlds. There will be teams there from literally all over the world. They’ve represented our school well and this is a huge honor. We’ve had some really hard working and bright students, but this is a first,” Cooper said. 

This unlikely dream team, who has never worked together before taking Mr. Cooper’s class will be competing on the global level, right here from Autauga County. The team leaves for Texas April 25th, and the competition is from April 25th to April 28th, where at the end of the competition, the game for next year will be announced.  

“I think that’s the biggest thing robotics does is it we spend so much time in education pouring facts in and pouring fax in and asking you just to regurgitate those same facts and this is something where it’s it you have to you have figure stuff out you’ve got to build something, I’m very proud of them,” Cooper said.  

Each year, the game that the robot’s and teams participate in is vastly different. With new rules, new objectives and new ways to score points. This year the game is based on height and getting what VEX calls triballs over, under and into certain aspects of the field.  

This is all played on a 12’ x 12’ rectangular field. One game, there’s two robots that compete in the Teamwork Challenge. They have 60 seconds to score points working with another bot from another team to score points. There’s also individual competitions where teams also compete in the Robot Skills Challenge where one robot takes the field to score as many points as possible. These matches consist of Driving Skills Matches, which will be entirely driver controlled, and Autonomous Coding Skills Matches, which is entirely based on the coding within the ‘brains’ of the bot.  

The robotics team and engineering classes through the Autauga County Technology Center are accepting donations in order to purchase materials and other items for future projects. Inquiries for donations can be made to Cooper at john.cooper@acboe.net.

“Mark and Walton and Jonathan were all first year robotics team folks, so for them to make it to worlds is amazing. They really focused on skills. I’ve taught some very brilliant students. These three have put in the research, put in the time, they worked hard and they figured stuff out. That’s sometimes a rare commodity these days,” Cooper said.