QE the best in the world!

Queen Elizabeth’s School was the most successful organisation in the world in this year’s VEX robotics Online Challenges.

Having already achieved significant successes in recent years at in-person regional, national and international Vex championships – including a world title in 2018 – QE’s robotics teams have recently added online competitions to their repertoire.

And now that the results are in for the 2022–2023 Online Challenges, it is clear just how strong their performances have been: QE has been informed that its teams were either winners or runners-up in nine separate challenges, with seven first places.

Not only do the winning teams receive cash prizes, they also gain automatic qualification for this season’s VEX Robotics World Championship in Dallas, USA.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “By any standards, these are fantastic results, and that is reflected in the fact that QE is the highest-achieving school or other organisation globally this year.

“My warm congratulations go to all the boys who took part and to our Head of Technology, Michael Noonan, and his team for the work they did in preparing them.”

Nine QE teams were named among the top places in 13 competitions, six of them at junior (VIQC) level and seven at senior (VRC) level.

One VRC squad – team number 20785X – was named winner of both the Theme It Up! Challenge and the Community Challenge, as well as being a runner-up in the Career Readiness Challenge. Another, 20785C, took two runner-up spots.

At junior level, 21549A was a double winner, taking the top spot in both the VIQC Career Readiness Challenge and the STEM Research Project.

Here are some examples of what the challenges involved:

• VRC and VIQC Career Readiness Challenge: entrants had to explore the way in which professionals in a specific career or company use and document the steps of the engineering design process. The challenge information stated: “We want you to explore a possible future career, and discover the similarities and differences in how that prospective career and VEX Robotics teams use and learn from the process of engineering design.”
• VIQC STEM Research Project: this involved exploring nature’s patterns and using that knowledge to engineer a new solution to a current problem.
• VRC Promote Video Challenge: participants were asked to make a video promoting their experience with Vex Robotics. They were invited to “show us who you are, who you aspire to be, and what makes your team special and successful”.

Pictured here are some of the QE robotics teams on their travels during the regional rounds of this year’s domestic VEX competitions.