After sending a record number of teams to the VEX Robotics world championships this year, the Burnaby school district's mechatronics and robotics program won its first-ever award at the international competition last week.
The Swarm – as teams in the Alpha Secondary School-based program call themselves – sent three teams to the world championships, held in Dallas, Texas April 25 to May 3.
Up against 82 teams in their divisions, Team 502A (Arek Hong, Wellington Chan, Rehan Aslam and Sidd Karthik) and Team 502X (David Dorland, Daniel Dorland, Akash Karthikeyan, Alex da Palma, Harvest Li and Sebastian Iameo) advanced to the first-round playoffs.
The Swarm has advanced to the playoff rounds before, but this year marked a new milestone, with Team 502W (Aaron Lew, Aiden Tam, Armaan Sitlu and Racine Liu and Travis Chow) earning the division design award.
It was the program's first award on the world stage, according to coach and technology teacher James Zhuang, who called it a "significant milestone" for the program.
"Out of 820 teams, each division comprising 82 teams, they won the prestigious design award," he said. "Their success can be attributed to meticulous planning and composing their detailed engineering notebook, which showcased the thoughtful analysis behind every design and programming decision."
Zhuang said the school district's robotics team has seen "tremendous growth" in the last three years, going from three high school teams to 12 teams in both high school and middle school.
Mentorship has been key, he said, with senior teams sharing knowledge and expertise with newcomers, both the within the Swarm's own ranks and across the broader B.C. VEX robotics community.
"We've gained invaluable insights from more established teams, fostering a culture of collaboration where teams assist each other in enhancing designs, construction techniques, coding and gameplay strategies," Zhuang said. "This collective effort has propelled B.C. into one of the strongest regions within the global VEX robotics community."
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