TogaTech
FTC Team# 13230
About Us
From Left: Sahil, Aahaan, Tej, Shreyas, Howard, and Ishaan
We are a garage team of eighth graders from Redwood Middle School, Saratoga. This is our first year participating in FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC). Most of us have done FIRST Lego League (FLL) in the past, and have some experience with writing code and with building robots.
We are all passionate about STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics), and our goal is to promote STEAM throughout our local community. Industries in sectors that involve STEAM are booming, and it is projected that from 2010-2020, jobs in the STEAM sector would increase by 14%, about twice as much as the national average.
Knowledge of STEAM will create good opportunities for children when they grow up. We are participating in FTC so that we have fun and can share our robot and knowledge with the young kids in our community, and excite and encourage them in STEAM.
What's FTC, and what's the Objective?
FTC is a robotics competition that is organized by FIRST, a nonprofit organization. Contrary to FLL where a team makes a robot using Legos, in FTC, a team makes a robot using real motors, wires and metal parts providing more flexibility than FLL.
In FTC competition, one team pairs up with another team, forming an Alliance. One Alliance plays against another Alliance, resulting in 4 teams on the field. Forming such alliances in a game teaches us to collaborate with other groups of kids at a young age.
Each year FIRST comes up with a new mission and the teams are challenged to achieve this mission by building and using a robot. The mission assigns points for tasks that the robot completes successfully. The more tasks a robot can do in the playing mat, the more points the alliance gets.
This year's game is called Relic Recovery. Here is a short video description of this year's game:
