A group of 33 local high school and junior high school students, including teams from Redmond High School (RHS), traveled to Florida for the fourth-annual VEX Robotics World Championship.

The students joined 5,000 students from 14 countries participating in VEX Robotics competitions for high school, middle school and college students. Redmond teams made it into the quarterfinals of the VEX Robotics high school competition and brought home trophies for two judged awards.

Team 575 or Haiku comprised of RHS students Raluca Ifrim, Adam Young, Tara Balakrishnan, Edward Zhang, Maya Balakrishnan and Ben Morrison won the first place trophy for the Design a Game Computer Animation Challenge for their game “Ring Rolled.”

Team 10D or Imension won the Technology Division Build Award, given for excellence in robot design and construction. This team is made up of Michael Koeppen, Jacob Chapman, Duy Duong, Paul Cretu, and Timothy Yong.

The students are part of the Exothermic Robotics Club which meets at RHS. The 50-student club is divided into teams of four to seven members, each of which builds its own robot and competes in both local and world events. All eight of the club’s robots qualified for the World Championship by winning a local event and seven groups attended, which made them one of the largest single-club contingents at worlds.