In some sports the name of the game is a team working together to reach each of their own peak physical performance, in FTC (first tech challenge) is the same except its a team of people all working together to perfect the physical performance of a single machine.
From mid September when the challenge for the year is announced, through the start of competitions in December and into the postseason in February. 3 times a week there are 2 hour long practices. These practices go from just concept work to designing and all the way to a complete and functional robot, this task is quite an accomplishment to complete in just the few months that you get to plan, build and practice before the competitions.
The First Robotics Program is a way for people to challenge themselves in engineering. It has every step of the engineering process; with planning for your design, programming to have good control, and running the robot through matches to optimize score.
With how difficult of an activity First Tech Challenge is, it’s impressive when a team can come together, persevere and learn over many years of participation, that’s why team 13603, “The Hacker Cats”, are impressive. The Hacker Cats have been working together since 2018, and have had around 8-9 members every year. They have even made it to state competitions 3 times.
That brings us to the current 2024 season, Hacker Cats have already gotten to world level competition by winning a regional and state competition, and excelled by winning another regional competition. They have been working hard on improving for their world competitions, though this all seems stressful they still find it fun to stay motivated. When asked about staying motivated long term Hackercats member Ely Wickander said: “I’m motivated mostly by myself, by the bar I set for what I do. I want to continuously get better each season, and I want to win just to prove to myself what I can do. Seeing other robots from around the world on the internet can be inspiring too, after seeing a brilliant design I sometimes can’t stop thinking about it and I’m reminded that there’s always another level of skill beyond where I’m at.”
Don’t let teams’ excitement for competition make you think it’s always hyper competitive, LSHS Robotics isn’t all about the competitions. When asked about their favorite memories from their years in robotics, Zander Szabo said “All the stupid stuff we’ve done and accidents we caused”. When asked about his favorite memory from this season Ely said “Driving is just fun no matter what, you’re doing the same things as in a video game but it’s real. There’s so much quick thinking and strategy involved in addition to perfecting the movement skills. You’ve got to balance speed with caution and precision though, because breaking the bot is never something you want to happen.”
So if this article sparked your inspiration for robotics and you’re considering joining LSHS Robotics but not sure if you should, as someone who has been in the program multiple years, if you are considering joining just try it, as Zander said “It’s a community and you don’t need any prior knowledge to do well”, and if your worried about being overwhelmed by large goals, you set your own goals, as Ely said “FTC provides as much challenge as you want it to; you and your team set the goals. So, if designing, building, or coding things sounds interesting to you, FTC gives you the freedom to do those things. It’s your team’s robot, and you get to make every decision, design every mechanism, and write every program in whatever way you or your team want to.”
