Who are we?
We are a small, student run team from La Jolla High school. Our team usually has around 12 full time members, and as many as 20 part time members.
Many people believe you have to have experience building or programming to join our club. That couldn’t be further from the truth! Most of our members have little prior knowledge when they join our team; the skills that people learn through FIRST Robotics can’t be easily taught in a classroom or learned at home. Because our robot is built entirely from the ground up we machine our own parts, do our own wiring, and write our own code. Any student that is curious about or interested in engineering is encouraged to join and learn these valuable skills as the year goes on.
Most team members continue to use what they have learned into college, going on to pursue STEM degrees at engineering focused colleges such as Cal Tech, MIT, UC Berkeley, and Cal Poly SLO.
What do we do?
Every year we participate in the First Robotics Competition, in which teams have 6 weeks to design and build a robot that competes in a sport-like event. At the end of the build season we attend regional competitions with teams from around the world in Las Vegas and San Diego. At the 2016 Las Vegas Regional we competed with teams from Mexico, China, Denmark, Germany and Brazil.
In the first weeks of the build season we hold meetings to discuss the new competition and design of our robot. Construction of the chassis begins around the second week of the build season to give our drive team as much time as possible to practice. Electronics, coding and fine tuning happen in the final weeks of the build season. At the six week mark the robot is bagged and tagged and may not be unwrapped until at a regional competition. Work on additional parts (like the arm) continues after the build season, and the parts are added on at the competition.
We work on fundraising and recruiting new members year round! Our team hosts a table at Club Day and Welcome to LJHS events. We also visit local our local elementary and middle schools to provide information and foster and interest in engineering in younger students.
What is FIRST? What is FRC?
FIRST is a non-profit organization that organizes robotics competitions for K-12 students. FRC is the high school division of FIRST Robotics , in which teams from around the world compete in a six-week competition to build a robot for a new game each year that is released in January of each year.
Robots must be able to do things such as throw and catch objects, scale objects, traverse obstacles, and lift and manipulate field components. Robots that compete in FRC are also larger than the small scale robots that compete in the lower division FLL and FTC competitions; our 2016 robot had a frame perimeter of 120 inches (28” X 32”), a ride height of 8 inches, and weighed in at 90 pounds.
Older Robots
