What do we do?
Every year, we spend about two months building a robot from scratch to participate in the FIRST Robotics Competition (or FRC), an internationally recognized program for high school students. On the first Saturday of January, FIRST reveals the FRC game for the coming season in an event known as “kickoff”. At first glance, these games seem similar to any other sport; players may need to throw or transport game pieces like balls or frisbees, perform athletic feats like climbing, work with a team, and even play defense to score points and secure a victory. The key difference, however, is that the players must be robots. Teams therefore must build a new robot every year that can complete certain tasks and work with other robots to earn points. In the eight weeks after kickoff, known as build season, we construct one such robot. The students do all of this work, from deciding on a game strategy, to designing a robot, to building the robot, programming it, driving it in the competition, and then fixing it any time anything goes wrong.
After that, we attend regional competitions. These typically take place over 2-3 days and comprise over 60 teams. The first matches that we play are qualification rounds, in which we are randomly assigned to an alliance with two other teams to play against another three-team alliance. The 8 individual teams that win the most matches in the qualification rounds then select two alliance partners each with which to compete in the playoffs. Teams that do well in playoffs can be invited to the State Championship or to FRC International Championships. Our team has been to State several times, and to Champs once.
We spend the rest of the year on learning experiences, performing outreach, fundraising, and working with other teams. We frequently perform demos at local schools and events, and we have also served as instructors or mentors to youth interested in STEM. Additionally, we are affiliated with the St. Paul HUB, an alliance of St. Paul-area robotics teams.
