Tiger Blog

 

Over the past couple months, we have been building a robot for the WaterFire event. Our robot has a capsule on the front to hold the torch so the braziers can be lit. While our mechanical team is building, our CAD and programming teams have been working on our design so that our robot is able to move well. We have a little bit more to revise, but for the most part we’re ready. We are going to light the torch for WaterFire this Saturday, September 20th.

https://www.waterfiresharonpa.org/september-20-2025/

Use the link for more information on WaterFire

In June, we received the opportunity to attend the Husky Regional Invitational at the University of Connecticut. While there, we competed with 24 teams from across the northeast region. This event was centered around the robot game portion of First Tech Challenge. Throughout the event, we were able to improve our robot and be successful with the outcome during each match. We won four out of our original five rounds and were picked as an alliance partner by the second place team. Ultimately, we made it to the semi-finals of playoffs and ranked fourth place overall.

We are currently preparing for our upcoming tournament in Philadelphia where we will be competing against 35 other FTC teams from across the state. We are so excited to test the revisions that we have made throughout our programming, mechanical make-up, and strategy at this tournament. Since our December scrimmage, we have been adjusting our robot for the best performance possible. We are also ready to have the opportunity to present all of our hard work and innovation to the judges.

On Saturday, December 7, we had the opportunity to compete in our first scrimmage of the season. We competed at the FTC Red and Green Scrimmage located in Gibsonia, Pennsylvania. This competition allowed us to test out our team’s strategy and practice our technician skills as drivers and human players. We were also able to pair our robot with other teams to test our collaboration skills and revise our plan for the future. This event was an integral step in preparing us for our upcoming tournaments by giving us an outlet to test our current design and receive feedback of alterations needed for our next tournament.

Over the summer, we have been busy reaching out to our community! We hosted three summer camps where we had loads of fun teaching young students about robotics and programming with the LEGO EV3 Mindstorm and the LEGO Spike Essential Robots.

Another event we look forward to every summer is Sharon WaterFire! We were able to demonstrate our robot and work with our sister FLL teams, the Sharon Tiger Techs.  At WaterFire we get to showcase our “RoboArt”.

We also had the opportunity to present in front of the Sharon Rotary Club. We partnered with the Tiger Techs yet again to showcase our robot and share updates of our season to the club.  We really appreciate their support and others in our community.  We are so appreciative our our Sponsors.

Mechanical Update:  We have built the main chassis and included our chassis motors.  We are currently experimenting with our intake and altering our design based on testing.  Our former team member from last year, Kyle, is coming back to assist as he is now studying mechanical engineering at Youngstown State University.

Programming Update:  We have been working with our programming mentor, Mr. Ackley on our programming side.  We have switched over our programming from On-Bot Java to Android Studio.  We are also happy to have our second member from our team last year assisting, Lucas D’Angelo.  Lucas is studying at Westminster College for computer science.  

Media Update:  Check out our social media at our instagram page @sharonhighrobotics, and our Facebook page @Sharon Robotics.

Since the start of the season, we have been busy designing our robot for Freight Frenzy.  The past few months we have been able to work towards our goals that we have set forth since our season kick-off.   We have split our team into several team including media, CAD/mechanical, and programming.  We all take part in outreach in some part.  Our team is small, but mighty!

Thank you to our season sponsors! Our sponsors can be seen here. We are also still accepting Patrons! If you would like to become a Patron, you can sign up here!