About our Club

What is Pioneer Robotics? 

Pioneer Robotics is an extracurricular activity that offers students the opportunity to extend and apply their learning in engineering, computer science, robotics, and community outreach. The club fields a team to compete with other teams from schools throughout Arizona and the Southwest region in the annual international FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC). Teams design, build and program a robot that operates autonomously and by remote control for game play with and against alliance partners.   

Opportunities to Learn

Pioneer Robotics offers an environment for interested students to develop and build their skills in various STEM and other career-oriented areas. These include, but are not limited to:

The 2024-2025 FTC INTO THE DEEP Field

The INTO THE DEEP field simulates a submersible navigating.   through the seas. Robots must reach into the central submersible and grab rectangular samples.  From there, teams are given two choices: 1. Bring the samples straight to the corner-mounted baskets, or 2. To bring the samples back to the observation zone where a human player can attach a clip that makes it a specimen and hang it on the submersible.

There are three periods in game play.  During the 30 second autonomous period, the robot uses pre-programmed directions in order to pick up and score pre-loaded and pre-placed samples and specimen.  In the next 2 minutes under driver control, the challenge is to acquire ramdomly placed samples from the central submersible and then score them either as specimen on the submersible or as samples in the baskets.  In the final 30 seconds, or endgame, the robot can hang from two heights of rigging in order to score extra points.