FTC Team #14518

FIRST Tech Challenge teams (up to 15 team members, grades 7-12) are challenged to design, build, program, and operate robots to compete in a head-to-head challenge in an alliance format. Guided by adult coaches and mentors, students develop STEM skills and practice engineering principles, while realizing the value of hard work, innovation, and working as a team. The robot kit is reusable from year to year and can be coded using a variety of levels of Java-based programming. Teams design and build robots, raise funds, design and market their team brand, and do community outreach to earn specific awards. Participants are eligible to apply for $80M+ in college scholarships. For more information about FTC, please check out their website here.

Season SIX - CENTER STAGE (23-24)

Our team has made a major transition this year in that we changed our robot part ecosystem entirely this season to GoBilda. Our new Viper Kits provided consistent lifting and pixel placement this year! We had a great run at the Kent State Qualifier, earning 9th place out of 22 teams. We were selected as an alliance partner, but were eliminated in the semifinals.

Season Five - Power Play (22-23)

This year marks our fifth year of FTC competitions! We've reused parts from our Skystone robot as a starting point for Power Play. We kept the low-profile design and mecanum wheels, but added a taller extension to our cascading kit and used 3/4" silicone bands to grip cones. We competed at the Kent State Qualifier and had a great showing. Our autonomous program worked great, delivering a cone to the high junction almost every time! Best of all, we were winners of the Motivate Award!

Season FOUR - FREIGHT FRENZY (21-22)

Our 22-23 Season welcomed back in-person competitions! Our team designed a robot that would successfully pick up weighted cubes and place them on all three of the levels of the shipping hub! We had to do some last minute snipping of our gripper wheels to make sure we passed final inspection, but were able to compete at the Kent State "unofficial" tournament. 

Season Three - Ultimate Goal (20-21)

Our 20-21 season was plagued with interruptions and covid restrictions. Unfortunately, we were unable to compete against other FTC teams from our region. We had a successful showcase event at our May Board of Education meeting where we were able to demonstrate our robot shooting rings and driving using both our autonomous and driver controlled programs. We also were able to share some of our new piloting skills with some team members who are members of our 8th grade drone class. RoboVikes are taking to the skies in 2022!

Season Two - Skystone (19-20)

This year, we dubbed ourselves "Seasoned Rookies", as it was no longer our first year competing. However, there was still a lot to learn. We competed in two events (Mahoning Valley & Kent State Qualifier) in this year's competition, Skystone. We struggled with programming using Vuforia once again this year, but created a very nice autonomous program that could deliver the first two stones in the line as well as park under the bridge. Our control and lift mechanism worked consistently and we were able to stack on average 3-4 stones, capping about 50% of the time during driver controlled. At Kent, we were shocked when we were selected as a first alliance pick, eliminated the #1 seeded alliance, and earned the Think Award!

Season One - Rover Ruckus (18-19)

On Saturday, February 2nd, 2019, the RoboVikes traveled to the Kent State University for their inaugural FTC competition, Rover Ruckus. The team had a few setbacks, the largest two being that we could no longer land off of the lander and that our camera used to sample was no longer working. Despite these issues, we were able to score a total of 397 points in our five matches, securing the 12th place spot out of the twenty eight teams at the tournament!