Lesson 1: Mechanics of a VEX Robotics Competition Match

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Hello, and welcome to the VEX Classroom. My name is Lauren, and in this video, we are welcoming you to chapter four. This is the first lesson in chapter four. The whole point of this chapter is to talk about the competition template. In this specific video, we're going to discuss the mechanics of a VEX Robotics competition match to ultimately answer the question: why do I need to use the competition template during a VEX Robotics competition match?

Before we dive into that, let's talk about materials. I have a V5 controller here and two of the different types of connections or cables that you will see in a competition match. However, you do not need these materials for this particular video, as I'm just going to demonstrate for you what you will see. So, you do not, again, need these materials for the purpose of this video.

All right, let's dive into the mechanics of a VEX Robotics competition match and again answer the question: why do I need to use a competition template? When I show up to a match, there are two things to note. Number one is there are two different types of alliances: a red alliance and a blue alliance. Each alliance has two robots or two teams, meaning there are four robots on a field during a match. Again, two of them on the red alliance, two of them on the blue alliance.

The second thing is there are two portions to a match: an autonomous portion where the robot runs without any sort of touching or interference from their driver or their team, and the driver control portion where the team actually does, or the driver actually does control the robot via a controller. As you can imagine, with four different robots on the field at one time, it's important that all of the robots start and stop at the appropriate times.

In order for this to happen, we have what's called the field control system. The field control system is going to actually control when the robots start and stop for both the autonomous and driver control portions of a match. In order for all the robots on the field to work with the field control system, we have to use the competition template. That's why we need to use the competition template, so that all the robots on the field actually work with the field control system, ensuring that all the robots start and stop at the appropriate times during the two different portions, the autonomous and driver control portions of the match.

Now, that being said, again, when you arrive at a match, I already talked about the two alliances. You will need to connect your controller to the field control system. There are two different types of connections or two different wires that you could be presented with in order to connect your controller to the field control system. Let's take a look at what those are.

All right, here's my controller. Here are my two different types of connections. I have an Ethernet cable, and I have a V5 Smart Cable. Again, you may see either one of these when you actually get to a match. There are two different types of ports on the back of the controller. This middle one is for the Ethernet. These two are Smart Port connections. Let's look at the Ethernet one first.

If this is the type of connection that I have, you can see here, I have a little tab towards the bottom. There's only one Ethernet port here, and my Ethernet cable also has a little tab there that you can see. I'm going to line up the bottom where that tab is down here with the bottom tab of the controller. When I connect them, you'll actually hear an audible click. (Ethernet port clicks) Now, I can't easily pull that out. If I want to remove it, I'm going to push on the tab and then pull it out. That is one of the types of connections that you will see. The other is the Smart Cable connection.

Thank you for watching this video. We hope you found it informative and helpful. Stay tuned for more lessons in chapter four.

Now, these, you're a little bit more familiar with because that's how we connect different motors and things and sensors to our brain. Either one of these right here is a Smart Port connection. So just like we talked about before, we have a little tab there. I'm gonna line up the tab with the bottom portion of the controller. You will hear an audible snap.

(Smart Port clicks)

And again, that's not able to easily pull out. In order to remove it, I'm gonna push down on the tab and then pull it out. So again, those are the two different types of connections that you will see at a competition match in order to connect your controller to the field control system.

All right, so just to recap again, when you get to a competition match, talking about the mechanics of that match, two alliances, red alliance and a blue alliance. Each alliance has two robots or two teams. In order for all of those robots to actually participate in the competition match at the same time and ensure that they're stopping and starting at the appropriate times, all the robots need to use a competition template in order for our field control system to actually, again, control that all the robots are starting and stopping at the same time.

This will then set us up for the next lesson, where we're actually going to look into the Blocks version of the competition template.

I hope this information was helpful, and I will see you in another video.

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