Who are the Purdue SIGBots? National robotics champions, that's who!
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue University’s robotics team, Purdue SIGBots, have vied for the VEX Robotics World Championship title for the last few years, but they were always stopped by divisional rivals from the University of Wisconsin-Platteville’s team, WiscoBots.
That all changed this year.
The Purdue SIGBots defeated their longstanding rivals at the divisional level, and then they went on to compete for the world title in Dallas, Texas, ultimately sweeping their competition, California Polytechnic State University’s Cal Poly Gear Slingers.
“This is the end goal for many of those on our team, and we finally got it,” said Dominic Holifield, a SIGBots team member and Purdue University graduate in mechanical engineering.
“Last year we were finalists in our division, and the year before that, we also had a team that was world finalists. We’ve been really close these past few years, but we finally got it this year.”
This year's achievement was built on the back of members who had years of experience building robots for the VEX Robotic competition as well as the team’s experience earning first place in the “skills” competition at the 2022 VEX Robotics World Championship.
For this year’s competition game, Over Under, teams needed to build two robots that could autonomously pass, collect and place balls within a goal, a robot that could also be remotely operated to allow drivers to compete against one another and finally a bot that could have the ability to climb up a pole.
At the collegiate level of the VEX competition, Purdue SIGBots’ robots were one of the top performing bots in the autonomous portion of the build, allowing the team to take home the Design award, as well as placing 10th overall in the “skills” competition.
This came as no surprise to Holifield as he explained that the team had spent thousands of hours designing their robots since the start of January.
“I know that the lab that we work in, at one point we had it opened for over 200 hours straight. Someone was always in the lab doing something for the robot,” Holifield said.
When reflecting on what made this year’s run in the world championship different from previous years, Holifield emphasized the change in “teamwork.”
“We definitely had a few problems over the past few years, mainly figuring out how to work together as a team, because a lot of the stuff you could do on your own. But the teamwork aspect having the two robots work together perfectly is just so important,” Holifield said.
“We made sure to have the right people on our team and coordinate every step of the way. Figuring out what strategy we wanted to do, how we were going to implement it and how we were going to split up work.
“The thing that allowed us to win was making sure we worked together as a team. I know it sounds pretty straight forward, but it’s a lot harder than you’d think, especially with a bunch of students who are still kind of learning.”
For many on the team, winning the VEXU robotic world championship was the bookend to many of their long careers in the VEX world.
This year’s team was comprised of Mihir Laud, Stephen Hohnholt, Joey Krejcie, Joe Lach, Brandon Liu, Dominic Holifield, Sean MacDonald, Alex Lam, Conner Siebert, Jacob Zawacki, Max Johnson, Thomas Cyze and Connor Nguyen.
“It was just an amazing moment. We were all screaming and jumping up and down as they announced we won,” Holifield said.
“A moment I’ll always remember.”
Noe Padilla is a reporter for the Journal & Courier. Email him at Npadilla@jconline.com and follow him on X at 1NoePadilla.
This article originally appeared on Lafayette Journal & Courier: Purdue SIGBots robotics team wins national competition in Dallas
