Join the FRC Club - Build a Robot

Five of our TISB students, Aymaan (Grade 9), Samkit (Grade 9), Theodor (Grade 10), Vivek (Grade 10) and Aanya (Grade 11), have over the past six months been participating in the First Robotics Competition (FRC), together with other team members from across Bangalore. By taking part in the competition, they have learned the CAD and coding skills that were used when building a real robot with the assistance of professional and student mentors. The team now wants to create a TISB FRC Club, where students would be able to get appropriate knowledge, skills and experience to take part in coming robotics competitions. We reached out to the team to learn more about the prospective club and the FRC.

We believe that the atmosphere and sense of community surrounding the competition would greatly benefit TISB, enabling students to obtain key skills and learning experiences – TISB FRC Team

The FRC is hosted by ‘FIRST’ (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology); an international non-profit organisation founded by Dean Kamen, the innovator and founder of Segway. The aim of FIRST is to inspire young people to become science and technology leaders.

The FRC is an international High School competition in which students create a team, build a robot and conduct outreach to raise awareness about STEM. Each year allows students to learn real-world engineering skills which they apply to build industrial-sized robots, while at the same time developing communication, leadership and collaborative skills. The competition is conducted across 33 countries with nearly 4,000 teams participating from across the globe. The competition is supported by global organisations, including NASA, Amazon, Google and Boeing. Moreover, it has been recognised by universities, such as MIT, Stanford, Yale, Columbia and Carnegie Mellon, some of which offer scholarships to FRC participants.

Through participating in this year’s competition, the TISB students acquired new skills in construction, electrical engineering, and programming, as well as the soft skills necessary to carry out such a project. During the competition, the robots created compete in matches of 2.5 minutes by performing tasks assigned by the organisers. “It’s as close to real-world engineering as a student can get”, says the team, who feels they have gained knowledge and skills needed by the younger generation in a world where advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence, driver-less cars and spacecrafts are becoming more important every day. As well as building technical skills, students have opportunities to gain experience in outreach, mentoring, fundraising and many other areas related to product management.

The FRC competition is open for all students in Grades 8-12, and the competition will take place in March 2022, in the US. The preparation for the competition happens in two phases. Firstly, the off-season phase, taking place entirely online, will happen from June to December 2021. Students will be trained in technical skills like CAD, mechanical engineering, and programming, which are useful when building robots. This will happen mostly through a 1.5 hour session once every week. In addition, outreach activities will be taking place and be carried out by the team. Secondly, the challenge will be released on 8 January 2022, and the main season will take place between January to March. During this time, students will build the robot with the skills gained during the off-season.

If you would like to develop your robotics skills and much more, join the TISB FRC team when they start up their club. To learn more about the FRC, visit the FIRST website.