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 2023-2024 FTC CENTERSTAGE Field

The CENTERSTAGE field simulates the wings, rigging, backstage and backdrops of a live performance theater.  Robots must navigate under the rigging or through the stage door to move small hexagonal pieces called pixels from one side of the stage to the backdrop on the other.  Colored pixels can be arranged to create a mosaic for more points.   

There are 3 periods in game play.  During the 30 second autonomous period, the robot must identify the location of a pixel on the field and place it in the matching column on the backdrop.  In the next 2 minutes under driver control, the challenge is to cross the field and place 2 pixels at a time as rapidly as possible.  In the final 30 seconds, or endgame, the robot can launch a paper airplane out of field and hang from the rigging for maximum points.