FIRST Robotics
About my time in FIRST Robotics as a designer, manufacturer, and wiring expert and the robots I helped make to compete with on the field.
Skills
Overview
I was on FIRST Robotics Competition team 1153 for four years in high school, and ended up designing three of the four robots I competed with. These robots won 6 silver medals, 9 awards, and one even ended up being ranked in the top 48 robots in the world. I used Onshape to fully design these robots, and was responsible for manufacturing, assembling, and wiring up these robots as well.
Competition Robots
I designed three robots that competed in 2025, 2024, and 2023, along with building and wiring the 2022 robot.
These robots were designed with being unique in mind, as we were not afraid to try something different. I had to balance how much innovation we could do in the 4 weeks I had for design with the small team that we had, never having more than 10 people on the team in any given year. The design followed a top down approach where I set out all the important dimensions in a master sketch that we used to create the individual subsystems. This was also useful for integrating the 5-6 different systems that were created each year. I also standardized on specific thicknesses and types of material (such as 1/4” polycarbonate, 1/8in and 1/4in aluminum) and sticking with #10 hardware every place I could. Our prototyping and design process, combined with our technical documentation and spreadsheets to track tasks and manufacturing set us up for success on and off the field, winning 6 silver medals, 9 awards, and being top 48 in the world in 2025, including a silver medal at Championships.
Cadathons
I also competed in and won two cadathons - a cad competition where you have around a week to fully design a robot that could compete for a hypothetical game. The technical binders for those winning submissions are below.