Middle and high school students from throughout New Mexico will descend upon the University of New Mexico’s Continuing Education Conference Center on Jan. 23 for the VEX Robotics Competition, sponsored by the UNM School of Engineering.

Twenty-four teams will come together for an action-packed day of competition, where they will battle against each other with robots created from the VEX EDR design curriculum.

Qualifying rounds will take place from 10 a.m. - 2:30 p.m., and elimination rounds and finals will be 2:30 - 4:30 p.m.

Participants will square off in the game “Nothing But Net,” which is played by scoring colored balls in high and low goals and by elevating robots in a designated climbing zone.

Teams will be arriving from Albuquerque, Farmington, Gallup, Mescalero Apache, Rio Rancho and Santa Fe public, private, charter schools, along with home-school groups and STEM societies.

At the UNM event, the UNM student chapter of National Society of Black  Engineers will provide snacks and lunch as part of their fund-raising efforts.

Also during the day, an additional four teams of Albuquerque and Santa Fe elementary and middle school students will play VEX IQ, a competition designed for younger children.

The UNM School of Engineering’s VEX Robotics Competition is one in a series of tournaments supported by the Robotics Education & Competition Foundation and various national, regional and local sponsors. 

The competition season culminates each spring, with the top-performing teams from local and state VEX Robotics contests competing against each other at VEX Worlds, where teams have the opportunity to challenge their top-ranked peers from around the country and over 30 countries around the world, including Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, India, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, and United Kingdom.

The VEX Robotics Competition is managed by the Robotics Education & Competition Foundation and serves as a vehicle for students to develop critical life skills such as teamwork, leadership and project management, honed through building robots and competing with students from the community in an exciting, non-traditional environment. The VEX Robotics Design System was built from the ground up and designed to be an affordable, accessible and scalable platform used to teach science, technology, engineering, and math education worldwide.