The Auburn Robotics Club serves Auburn University students who are interested in learning more about robotics, competing in robotic competitions or volunteering at events.
The club both hosts or competes at a variety of events. Its signature events include VEX IQ Robotics Competitions, VEX V5 Robotics Competitions, VEX U on the Plains, VEX U World Championship and Combat Robotics Competitions.
Diane Pham, president of Auburn Robotics Club and senior in industrial and systems engineering, breaks the club into three main categories. The first category is volunteering and outreach, which is what the club was founded for.
“It [Auburn Robotics Club] was founded in 2019 by a group of students who wanted to be able to do robotics outreach in the community and have a club to kind of organize behind,” Pham said. “We host competitions for K12 schools and then we also host university level competitions.”
For those looking to be involved, but do not want to be on a team, can volunteer. Volunteers help with the event running aspect of the club. Volunteers can be referees, sell concessions, help teams get to their matches on time, score keep and judge.
The second and third categories of Auburn Robotics Club are the robotics competition teams: the Auburn VEX U Team and the Auburn Combat Robotics Team.
VEX Robotics is a company that sponsors competitions and manufactures many of the parts used in building the robots. They run the collegiate-level VEX Robotics Competition in which the Auburn VEX U team participates in.
The Auburn Vex U team’s robot must compete in complex games where the goal of the game is to score as many points as possible. Every year a new game comes out with new challenges that the team must face and compete in.
The Combat Robotics Team takes a different approach. They design and battle robots in competitions similar to BattleBots. Each year, the team modifies and improves their robot to better compete against their opponent’s robot.
Typically, the club will go to about two to three competitions a year, and Auburn will host a competition.
This year the Auburn Robotics Club will host the VEX IQ Mix and Match and VEX V5 Push Back Tournament on Nov. 15 in the Students Activities Center. The teams will compete among each other for a spot at the Alabama State VEX Robotics Championship. Spectators are welcome to come and watch the competitions.
The club is sponsored by the Southeastern Center of Robotics Education (S.C.O.R.E.) which falls under the College of Sciences and Mathematics, though it is also considered an engineering club.
Anyone interested in joining the club is welcome to. Though the club is engineering dominated, all majors are welcome to come. Current members’ majors range from engineering to accounting to sociology.
Pham first became involved in the club as a volunteer when she was a freshman. She later became the volunteer coordinator and is now serving her second year as president.
“We’re really open to new members. We’ve had a lot of new members really thrive. There are a lot of people who have competed since they were in elementary, middle, high school and then came, and they joined the college level team,” Pham said.
Some students join the club just for fun and the social aspects, while others join to help them get a head start in a career related to robotics.
“It’s a really easy club to join. It’s one of those clubs where the more you put into it, the more you get out of it,” Pham said.
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