I’m a 6 year veteran of the FIRST robotics programs and I whole-heartedly believe in their message of giving back. I moved to Reno as part of working for Tesla at GF1 and one of the first things I did was search for an FTC team that would be willing to have me as a mentor. Through this, I met a group of fantastic students who love FTC as much as I did. They were young, but willing to learn and work hard. I spent nearly every Sunday with them for four months and we worked for 5-6 hours a day on everything from mechanical design to programming.
I helped them learn how to analyze mechanical designs for potential failure points, how to avoid those failure points, and general theory on how FTC robots are usually made. They also asked for help with their software and I ended up teaching the basics of object oriented program and good code organization. We learned what sensors did what, how to use them, and how to interface with them to get their robot working correctly in autonomous. Due to their hard work, they were able to receive the 2nd place Control Award and 3rd place Inspire Award at the Nevada State Championship in 2019.