- Author: John Gardner
Vortechs Robotics (FRC team 3257) won the 2021 FIRST Infinite Recharge Sacramento Valley, Phosphorus Regional. Additionally, the team won an award for its robot's autonomous capabilities (Autonomous is where the robot is driverless and completes certain tasks using its programing and sensors).
The Vortechs team is a 4-H robotics project comprised of up of high school students from South Placer County high schools and homeschooling students.The team constructs its robots in Roseville and tests the robot at Love of Learning Homeschool Learning Center in Rocklin. The high school students begin the project year by analyzing the current year's competition rules, goals and objectives of the robot. Next, they design an engineer the robot and its mechanisms to achieve the goals and objectives. Then they create CAD designs and begin manufacturing the robot. Next the electrical group begins wiring the robot and creating their elaborate electrical boards. Finally, the robot is off to the programming group where they will design and program custom software to achieve the goals set by FRC (First Robotics Competition). After all this is completed it's usually time to start developing the upgrades. The process takes a lot of time but in the end the students learn great lessons on working together and achieving goals.