A team from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, led by students from University of Michigan – Shanghai Jiao Tong University Joint Institute (UM-SJTU JI), was crowned the Design Division Champion, as well as VEX U Robot Skills Challenge World Champion with fifteen consecutive wins at the 2019 VEX Robotics World Championship held in Louisville, Kentucky, United States, in April.
A total of 1600 teams from over 40 countries attended the event including 77 university teams from renowned universities worldwide. The VEX competition include matches of division practice and skills challenge. During the competition, students are tasked with designing and building a robot to compete against other teams in a game-based engineering challenge. The winning SJTU1 team with JI members including Chongdan Pan, Ruixing Zhou, Yingwen Tan, Jinglei Xie and Zhiyi Pan also took the award of VEX U World Finalists.
“This World Championship has put forward high requirements for our publicity ability, adaptability, engineering practice ability and psychological quality. In the twists and turns of the game, we have experienced various processes, such as sudden machine failure, falling short of success in the grand final, and fighting an uphill battle to get the champion. With the bright lights and the attention of tens of millions of spectators, we have played our due level and achieved proud results, which is inseparable from the efforts of all of us day and night, “said Chongdan Pan, a JI junior student and leader of the SJTU1 team.
The VEX Robotics World Championship held in April each year in the United States is the largest robotics competition in the world by Guinness World Records. There are three divisions of this robotics competition meant for different age groups and skill levels: VEX EDR, VEX U, and VEX IQ. VEX EDR is for middle and high school students, VEX U is for university students, and VEX IQ is for elementary and middle school students only.
