Auburn team wins largest student robotics competition in the world

For nearly 20 years, the VEX Robotics World Championship has basically been the World Cup of competitive robotics — the pinnacle of a global pipeline built to spark STEM interest from kindergarten through college. More than 20,000 teams from over 50 countries compete across all levels; only a few hundred make it to Worlds. Guinness calls it the largest robotics tournament in the world. It is, in the world of robotics education, a big deal. And Auburn Robotics Club sponsor Jennifer Spencer is a big fan.

The former elementary educator with Auburn City Schools began integrating robotics in her classroom in 2010. She adopted the VEX platform in 2017 and started a team that she coached to the state championship. In 2018, she joined the Southeastern Center of Robotics Education (SCORE) housed within the College of Sciences and Mathematics as assistant director, with the aim to “spread the use of educational robotics in the classroom,” she said, “and also to increase the competitive robotics side of things." 

What she witnessed in St. Louis the night of April 27, she said, was a bullseye 16 years in the making.

“We had two teams at the championships, Aubie1 and Aubie2,” she said. “Several of the kids on Aubie1 did VEX at Auburn High School. Almost all of the members of Aubie2 are from Alabama — two are from Tennessee — but they’ve all competed in VEX for years.”

Campbell Edgeworth, a sophomore in industrial design, has been at it since 8th grade.

“It was kind of my main thing in high school,” she said. “My senior year, we made it to the division final, but we didn’t get out, so I never got the chance to get to the next stage and compete for a World Championship.”

That chance was pretty much the main reason Davis Stone came to Auburn. 

“I’ve been competing in Vex since 3rd grade,” said Stone, a freshman in mechanical engineering. “SCORE at Auburn was really the only place running competitions well.”

Other schools offered more scholarships. Auburn offered a shot at glory. 

Monday night, he said, was “like waking up into a dream I’ve had for over a decade.”

“I always had Auburn as my top pick due to already having a connection to it through robotics,” Stone said. “I’d been chasing a world championship too long to give it up in college. But winning as a freshman almost shouldn’t be possible because the jump from high school to university robotics is so different. But SCORE and Mrs. Spencer gave us the tools to be successful because they have the same goals and the same mindset as the club.

“The amount of work our team put in is incredible.”

During most of the year, the team put in about 10 hours a week in the SCORE office inside Beard-Eaves Memorial Coliseum. Leading up to St. Louis, 20 hours per week was normal.

“It's just confirmation that hard work does pay off,” he said.

Jack Stewart, a sophomore in industrial and systems engineering, had a feeling it would. 

"I've come very close to making it in high school, where we were initially, like, winning our division, but it didn't work out,” Stewart said. “So, I was like, if we are in the finals of our division, we are getting past that point, so help me."

They got past it. They took out East Texas A&M University, then China’s Chongqing University. 

“As soon as we won our division, we're like, ‘oh my gosh, we have a chance to, like, win the whole thing,” said electrical engineering freshman Payden Nelson. “We were so focused on, like, going match by match and not trying to get ahead of ourselves, so we didn’t see it as a possibility before that.” 

Others didn’t see it as much of a possibility, either — especially the Canadians, at least not at first. 

“There’s a team from British Columbia that won it all last year. Basically, when we played them in our first match, we absolutely stomped them and they refused to say ‘good game’ to us or shake hands,” Stewart said.

“But after we beat them in the semi-finals, they were cool with us because they realized, like, it wasn't just luck.”

No, not luck — strategy, a kind no one else seemed to employ for this season’s competition challenge, which required teams to coordinate two robots in positioning 88 blocks into specific goal zones. There’s a 30-second autonomous period where robots run entirely on pre-programmed code, then a 90-second driver-controlled portion. It’s complex.

“A lot of other teams build two of the exact same robot,” Simons said. “We built two types of robots intentionally to have a really good score on the high goal, and being able to be really fast and maneuverable, and building another robot that's able to do the middle goal really well.

“Once we got to the finals, everyone started talking to us and being nice. They realized we knew what we were doing.”

Then they did it one more time.

It was the best two out of three against Arkansas Tech University. The cheers started back up. 

“Aubie1 was leading the rest of us in the stands,” Spencer said. “We did Bodda Getta, we did Two Bits, we did all the cheers in the Dome that night. And every time they announced the team, the emcee would lead them in a ‘War Eagle’ because he knew that’s what they’d done the whole time they were there.”

Aubie2 easily took the first match thanks to an amazing final-second maneuver the emcee couldn’t get over. 

“That was a big move by Aubie! That could have made the difference as the clock strikes zero! What a move there at the end by the Blue Alliance!”

The second match was as tight as they come.

Diane Pham could barely stand it. 

Pham, who graduated Saturday with a degree in industrial and systems engineering, has served as president for the past two years. She handles finances, helps coordinate events, organizes World Championships watch parties. 

“There was a group of us who couldn’t make the trip watching live together in our office,” she said. “I’m so proud of them. I've seen them grow not only in skill but also in how they support one another as a team over the past year. We were sitting there watching for hours. It was very suspenseful.”

Indeed. The referees crunched the numbers; it came down to a single block. The results flashed on the screen. The toilet paper started flying. 

“It’s Auburn winning Worlds! War Eagle! Take the stage! It’s yours to have!”

“The whole place went nuts,” Spencer said. “We had a community robotics team from Auburn that was there competing in the middle school event, and they sat with us in the Dome and were right there cheering alongside us. For those students who are currently in middle school to see these college students on this worldwide stage and they've just won? It's huge," she said, “it’s huge.” 

It definitely was for the young man the team met Tuesday morning who, as it happened, was also in town for VEX. He and his parents were en route to the middle school competition.

They didn’t get his name, Simons said. But they remember the look on his face.

“The family followed us outside and we showed them the trophy. They were, like, ‘there’s no way.’”

Then they got out their phones again. This time they didn’t just want a picture of Dory and Bruce — they wanted a picture with Carter, Jack, Campbell, Payden and Davis.

“The kid was like ‘I’m going to remember this forever. I got into an elevator with the world champions.’”