FTC wins first place at their first competition!  

Prior to the competition, the team had a difficult period of preparation, with three weeks of meeting daily during the seniors’ college application season.

“There were a lot of mistakes and delays, and some of the code wasn't working at the last minute,” said FTC Captain Ellen Li (12). “So we were up until 3 a.m. … making sure that the robot worked the way we wanted it to.”

FTC ran into a few obstacles, for example having to switch out one of the drivers at the last minute due to time conflicts during the preparation segment. Fortunately, Claire Dong (9), who was substituted in, and Lucas Berliner (9) were able to operate the robot smoothly, without many difficulties. The matches themselves were also nerve-wracking, especially when the points were close. As a result, the victory was incredibly rewarding and exciting for the members.

“[I was thinking, ] ‘We're the top dogs here. We’re the best,’” said Adi Rathore (9). “ I felt so proud of our team … I know we had one loss [but] we're going to make our bot better.”

Another moment of accomplishment was when they were recognized by another team’s member for their skill and success.

“I overheard him pointing to our team, saying, ‘oh, that's the really, really good team,’” Li said.

One key reason FTC was able to achieve such a great victory was due to their team spirit, one of their greatest strengths.

“Our team spirit really helped the rhythm and the overall experience of the game,” Li said. “The energy and determination we had made the win possible.”

A small team of FRC leads competed, led by FRC mechanical lead George Tao (11), who put in incredible work to CAD the robot himself.

“We worked right up until the deadline,” Tao said. “In total, I estimate I spent around 50-60 hours during the 9 days designing. We opted for a very capable architecture that could accomplish every aspect of the game; however, this came at the expense of the additional time it would take to model everything.”

The gamble paid off, with 840 finishing second in both the official judging and the People’s Choice award, resulting in a $250 WCP Gift Card for the team this season.

“To be honest, I didn't think I would place on the podium,” Tao said. “The shock I had when someone from the winning team told me that the results had been released and that I had placed second right behind them, was really an incredible experience.”

In addition to CAD, the competition also required documentation for game strategy and important mechanisms. While the robot CAD was the primary reason for victory, part of their ranking was also determined by their extensive strategy documentation.

“Alex [Zhao] and I put together a detailed strategy for each phase of the game: autonomous, tele-op and endgame,” said FRC Strategy Co-Lead Anish Dara (12). “We included clear diagrams for ideal robot cycle paths, as well as quantitative and qualitative analysis of potential robot features.”

Because the CADathon served as a new opportunity for almost everyone competing, participating was highly beneficial in FRC’s preparation for the next season.

“The most challenging part for me was figuring out how to [present] so much strategy in so few sentences,” said FRC Strategy Co-Lead Alex Zhao (12). “We’ve never actually written down our match strategies for competition before, but I really like what we were able to create strategy-wise.”

The team plans on taking these lessons and implementing them for their actual competition.

“This season, we plan on doing something similar by putting together a document for our strategies, which will help us a lot during competitions and before matches,” Dara said.

840’s official competition season begins with kickoff on Jan. 4, the beginning of a six-week build season. Their first competition is the Orange County Regional, which will take place from Feb. 26 to March 1 in Costa Mesa, California.

Created by Angela Nguyen (10) and Lillian Huang (10), the curriculum consists of several hands-on activities to keep the children engaged while teaching them fundamental robotics skills.

Though keeping the attention of multiple toddlers is a challenging task, the Outreach members successfully led them through activities such as sandwich making and blind maze. During the sandwich-making game, one participant makes a sandwich under the direction of their peers.

“The person giving the instructions has to be very specific,” Nguyen said. “Let's say they're saying, ‘spread the jam,’ You would actually use your hand to spread the jam on the piece of bread.”

This game aims to build on their ability to give specific directions, which translates to real-world instances like programming, where the coded instructions have to be extremely clear.

Overall, the program ran smoothly, especially for their first-ever RoboTOTs event. The most challenging task was communicating ideas in a way that the toddlers could understand easily.

“I wasn’t sure how much they knew at that point, and how much they could receive,” Huang said. “But they were also really fun to teach because they were all really curious … and involved. They seemed like they were having fun.”

They have organized two RoboTOTs events in November, and plan to continue to expand the program.  

Fall Community Night

This year, besides some tweaks to schedule and organization, one major development from the prior years was the addition of a raffle, where parents were encouraged to buy tickets for the opportunity to win prizes. Prizes included vouchers to Top Golf, Amazon gift cards, steak dinners, lottery tickets, etc. The raffle was a big success, garnering high parent participation and contributing excitement to the atmosphere.

“Everyone really enjoyed [the raffle], and it brought the community together,” said Co-Director Aanvi Gupta (12). “When we turned off the lights and did the raffle drawings, you could really tell that everyone was super excited.”

Aside from the raffle, the potluck was also successful, with a variety of food from different cultures, like pasta, kimbap, potstickers, samosas, etc.

On a more educational aspect, there were subteam rotations as well. While FRC and FTC demonstrated their robots, MATE showed the parents around the shop, and the business teams went in depth explaining their role on the team, with Marketing also selling merchandise.

Aragon Robotics Booster Inc is now a 501(c)3 nonprofit (EIN 33-1536045)!

Newsletter Writers: Sophia Cheng, Julia Chang, Anish Dara
Newsletter Editors: Ethan Tawn, Ellen Li