VEX Sydney Day 4: Grand Finals!

Today is the Grand Finals! We are really excited about it! After an early breakfast at 6.45am, we made our way to the competition venue before 8am. The results of the qualifying rounds were released. We were a little disappointed that both S05 and S06 were not ranked among the top 8 teams.

The top 8 teams then began selecting their alliances for the quarter finals. This is when our efforts of networking with alliances in the past 2 days paid off! A few top teams approached S05 and expressed interest in partnership! We took the opportunity to explain how our robots can complement the top teams'robots especially in terms of defensive strategies. In the end, the China team which ranked 2nd picked S05 as their finals alliance! We were ecstatic!

From then onwards, our partnership with our alliance flourished. The partnership was flawless and we beat all the teams in the quarter and semi finals and entered the Grand Finals!

The Grand Finals was a close fight. In the last game, we met some issues but we managed to resolve at the last moment. The alliance won the final match!

WE ARE THE ASIA PACIFIC VEX ROBOTICS CHAMPIONS!







Another great result came from Liren who emerged runner up for the tough Programming Skill Challenge. It is a double victory for Team Rulang and Singapore! With that, Team Rulang received a record breaking double gold awards in this competition!

More photos and videos will be uploaded when we return to Singapore tomorrow night!

VEX Sydney Day 3: Qualifying Round

Our big day finally arrived! Today is the competition qualifying round. This morning we woke up very early at 6am for breakfast. After that we made our way to the competition venue.



After the opening ceremony, we immediately got into action. Team S05 and S06 partnered with other teams to compete in the VEX 'Clean Sweep' game.



Before each game, we discussed strategies discussed yesterday and executed the plans. Boths teams performed very well and scored many crucial points. However, not everything was a smooth ride. We faced technical issues and we must solve them on the spot. Sometimes we made mistakes and we learnt along the way. At the end of the day, the teams recorded a total of 6 wins.

Both teams also presented our mechanical journals to the judges. The judges asked us some questions and we managed to answer them confidently. We hoped we have impressed the judges.



Good news came from the Robotics Skills Challenge! Liren was the top scorer of the day in the Programming Skills Challenge and is currently the top contender of winning this award for Singapore tomorrow!

We really looked forward to the Grand Finals tomorrow! No time to blog now, it's time for robot maintainance and vigourous testing before the Grand Finals!

VEX Sydney Day 2: Robot Inspection and Trial Session

Today we had our breakfast at 9am. After a pretty heavy breakfast, we packed up our stuff and headed down to the competition venue - The Sydney Olympic Park Sports Centre.



We waited for our turn to do robot inspection. Everything went on very smoothly. Then we spent the rest of the time trying our robots on the playfields.

We also met many participants from other countries, especially alliances from China. We exchanged many ideas and learnt a lot from them. They were also very impressed by our creativity and maturity!





After another busy day, we headed back to the hotel and enjoyed a Macdonald's dinner. We can't wait for the actual competition to start tomorrow!

VEX Sydney Day 1: Preparation Day

After an 8 hours flight, we finally arrived at Sydney at 7.40am.



We took a bus to Hotel Ibis at Sydney Olympic Park. While waiting to check in, we had breakfast at Macdonald's.



After breakfast, we went to a nearby convenience store and grabbed the most essential item of any overseas trip - Water! Drinking water is really important to keep our bodies hydrated during overseas competitions. Joel demonstrated how it is done :D





We finally checked in our hotel rooms after a long wait. We got into action almost immediately. Although we are tired, we managed to fix up the VEX robots and tested them within hours.

After a day of hardwork, we had a hearty dinner at a Western restaurant. We are turning in early tonight. At the same time, we are gearing up for the actual test run at competition ground tomorrow. Can't wait for the competition to start!

VEX Sydney Day 0: We are on our way to Sydney!

Bidding goodbyes to our parents.



Briefing by teachers.



Last photo before switching off mobile phone.