FTC Robotics

I’ve participated in FIRST Tech Challange Robotics for 5 years, from 8-12th grade. I’ve attempted to document all I can below from those years :)

Timeline

  1. 2023-2024 Season: #10809 Crow Force
  2. 2020-2023 Season: #8097 Botcats
    • 2022-23: Design Lead
      • Managed design of the robot both in software and hardware
    • 2021-22: Hardware Lead
      • Overall managing of robot design in addition to coordinating with Software Branch
    • 2020-21: Hardware Member
      • Contributing to CAD iterations while under pandemic lockdown
  3. 2019-2020 Season: #16105 Darkness Rising
    • Hardware member, contributing to building the robot and designing/printing parts

#10809 Crow Force

For my final year in robotics, I broke with the usual standard of people sticking to one “branch” of a team. More specifically, instead of focusing on just hardware design or outreach, I contributed to:

Software

During the season, I was interested in making decent looking CSS sites, and as such saw an opportunity to make a simple site for the team.

Using my existing stylesheet template, I created a framework that both my teammates and mentors could add onto.

Hardware

Over the summer leading up to the season, I threw together a rough chassis design so that once the season properly started, we could focus on more important things like scoring systems.

Chassis

Summer Chassis Prototype

Throughout the season, I was designing secondary 3D-printed parts, such as a battery holder, dual-sided markers, and electrically insulating sideplates.

Blue Alliance Marker

Blue Alliance Marker that I designed and rendered

Towards the end of the season, I performed most of the render’s for our team’s portfolio, mainly rending photos of the robot itself.

Front Robot Render

Render of the front of the robot

Rear Robot Render

Rear robot render, showing off our electronics

#8097 Botcats

2022-23 Season

As Design Lead for this season, I was focused on managing our CAD to robot pipeline, which included ensuring our Autodesk Fusion drive was running smoothly and contained CAD files for the hardware we had on-hand. Carrying on from the 2021-22 season, I also 3D printed our robot’s custom parts.

2021-22 Season

During this season, I had a broader role as Hardware Lead. In addition to the responsibilities above, I also managed division of labor across hardware members, kept tabs on part inventory, and ensured we had strong communication of requirements and progress with the Software branch.

2020-21 Season

Since this season was during the pandemic, my contributions were focused on contributing CAD iterations towards the robot design along with 3D printing smaller components for the physical robot.

#16105 Darkness Rising

As a rookie hardware member on Darkness Rising, I learned how to use CAD software, mainly Tinkercad and a little Solidworks, and build FTC robots, something I wasn’t used to coming from LEGO robotics.