Family Shelter Event (2024)
On February 22, Cupertino Robotics members visited the San Jose Family Shelter. They demonstrated the FIRST values and showcased one of the robots, to ignite an interest in STEM and robotics. Afterward, they hosted a lego build contest, challenging the kids to think outside of the box when building the longest horizontal bridge.
Homeless Pods (2024)
Recently, we reached out to the Nueva School and visited their school to see the homeless pod they built. They showed us their lab so that we could build our own in the future.
Elementary School Skit (2024)
Written and enacted by several Cupertino Robotics students, our skit provided fun and knowledge to young Eisenhower Elementary School students. The skit introduced basic robotics concepts to the children through a fun minions-themed story. Using interactive elements, each young student learned how to apply STEM concepts to their futures.
E-Waste Drive (2024)
Partnering with our school’s environmental club, we recently organized an E-waste drive with the primary goal of addressing the environmental impact caused by electronic waste generated by technology and robotics. We successfully collected 40 pounds of e-waste from both our school and the local community. This initiative aimed to mitigate the detrimental effects of improperly disposed electronic devices. The gathered e-waste was donated to a local Goodwill organization, ensuring responsible disposal and promoting the reuse of electronic materials for a more sustainable future.
International Conference Call (2023)
Through our global outreach effort, our team held an international call with underfunded government schools in India, educating students about the concept of robotics. Collaborating with the LEAP program, we not only introduced students to robotics concepts but also facilitated English language learning. Throughout the initiative, we successfully engaged 12 students spanning from middle school to high school, igniting their curiosity and passion for technology. This marks our team's second year undertaking such a program, and we are working towards expanding to other locations, striving to empower more young minds with the transformative potential of robotics in education.
Fall Festival (2023)
Cupertino Robotics has been attending the Fall Festival at Memorial Park annually for the past years. On September 9, 2023, members of our FTC teams and FRC team attended the festival to represent our programs. With information about our FLL, FTC, FRC, and Project Artemis programs, community members at the festival got the chance to learn about how their children can involve themselves in robotics.
SJSU Spartan Racing Visit (2023)
In early September, members of the Cupertino Robotics FRC team visited the San Jose State University Spartan Racing Team. Participating in the international Formula SAE competition, the Spartan Racing Team innovates design strategies to build aerodynamic and efficient vehicle to be raced. Working with kinematics, condensed accumulators, electric motors, electronics, software, chassis framing, and many more aspects, the Spartan Racing Team produces a completely new racing vehicle that is seen at competition each year.
Half-Moon Bay Dream Machines Exhibition (2023)
On April 30th, 2023, members from the Cupertino Robotics FRC Team 2473, the Goldstrikers, traveled to Half Moon Bay to attend the Dream Machines event. Bringing the FRC robot from the 2023 season, our Team 2473 had the opportunity to exhibit the hard work put into the robot. The event was a show where unique and vintage vehicles were displayed along with eight FRC robots, each from a different FRC team.
Elementary School Skit (2023)
Written and enacted by several Cupertino Robotics students, the play provided fun and knowledge to 220 young Blue Hills Elementary School students. The skit intended to introduce basic robotics concepts to young children and provide them with more specific information about possible applications of STEM topics.
Hyde Visit (2023)
On May 11th, members of the Cupertino Robotics’ FTC and FRC teams visited a local middle school, Hyde Middle School, to share robotics with the students. Middle school students observed the FRC robot drive across the gym and score different elements that were a part of the 2023 FRC game. The students also got the chance to drive around FTC robots from the Cupertino Robotics’ FTC teams and score the cones as done in the 2022 FTC challenge.
Demo with Daisy Girl Scouts (2023)
Recently, volunteers from FTC Team 7610 recently had the opportunity to share their passion for STEM with a group of Daisy Girl Scouts at the Tech Museum. They watched an I-max movie about humanoids in the I-max theater at the Tech Museum. The volunteers then presented the girls with robot parts, explained robot design and CAD, and even allowed them to drive the robot. It was a hands-on experience that encouraged the girls to take an interest in STEM.
Kennedy Middle School Fall Festival (2022)
On October 7, 2022, volunteers from the Cupertino Robotics FTC teams set up a booth at the Kennedy Middle School Fall Festival. Their main goal was to promote robotics to people of all ages, through engaging visuals and the chance to drive a robot. Overall, the booth showcased what Cupertino Robotics was all about core values, robot driving, and fun!
Fun Fest (2022)
On September 24, 2022, Cupertino Robotics attended the Fun Fest at Memorial Park. All FLL teams, all FTC teams, and the FRC team that are a part of the Cupertino Robotics organization were showcased along with information about our club overall. The event was a success as many people in our community were able to learn about the impact and purpose of our club and robotics as a whole.
Card Making (2022)
During the beginning of December 2022, members of the Cupertino Robotics club and members of Cupertino NHS came together to spend time creating and decorating cards to donate to a local senior center. Materials were provided and members had the freedom to design any themed holiday card with handwritten notes and custom designs. The event was a success and we were able to donate nearly 130 cards!
FTC Teams Discussion (2022)
On November 18, 2022, representatives from all four FTC teams from Cupertino High School met with FTC team 18715, team Artemis, from Evergreen Valley High School in a conference call to discuss the progress that has been made so far in the season. Through asking one another questions and sharing each other’s ideas and tips, the teams were collectively able to reflect on and learn about how they could better themselves during the remaining duration of the season.
KAST (2022)
On November 2, 2022, students from our FTC teams presented for elementary school students and introduced Cupertino robotics while explaining what robotics is. Presenters talked about under represented scientists and held build challenge where students constructed bridges using paper. Students also got the chance to drive a chassis through an obstacle course and students received fun badges to represent robot drivers licenses.
Johnson & Johnson FIRST Day (2022)
In late September, members of our FRC team 2473, along with members of other FUHSD FRC teams, traveled to the Johnson & Johnson office for a day. There, attending students got the chance to explore an example of how robotics is used in the real world. Members were able to tour the office and some of the robotic elements that the company is currently working on. The visit ended with advice from workers who currently are or in the past were involved with FIRST and everyone left nourished with an insight to how robotics is used way past our FRC teams.
Card Making (2021-22)
During the 2021-2022 school year, the Cupertino Robotics club hosted two cardmaking events. The goal of the events was to give back to our community in fun ways that are not entirely STEM related. During both events, members were given a theme as well as materials to create cards with handwritten notes and illustrations. The events were a success and we were able to donate around 200 cards to a local senior center center.
Elementary School Robotics Skit (2022)
On May 23, 2022, a group of students from Cupertino Robotics visited Murdock Portal Elementary school and presented a robotics skit, “Finding Rio.” The skit was made to introduce robotics and STEM concepts to elementary school students. The skit was about a bird that needed to be rescued. The performers walked the audience through the process of building a simple robot: brainstorming, designing, building, and testing. All of the audience had a chance to contribute to the skit while also learning a lot of new concepts. Visit the blog tab if you would like to learn more.
Izant Projects (2021)
When going on walks, Kathy, Mr. Izant’s friend, needs to use a wheelchair and is assisted by her husband and service dog. She often has trouble giving treats to her dog and cleaning up her dog’s waste, which are tasks her husband must assist her with. Students from FRC team 2473 worked with Mr. Izant to engineer two devices in hopes of providing her with more independence and freedom: a dog treat dispenser and a dog waste scooper, both of which could be mounted on her wheelchair.
Fall Festival (2019)
Students from FTC and FRC from Cupertino Robotics attended the annual Fall Festival, which took place on Saturday, September 14, at the Cupertino Memorial Park. Students demonstrated last season’s robots with festival attendees. Younger visitors even had an opportunity to drive the robots and were assisted by the Cupertino Robotics team to do so. This was a great opportunity for the team to showcase what Cupertino Robotics has accomplished so far while educating the community on how they can get involved.
Intuitive Surgical Open House
On October 5, Cupertino Robotics attended the Intuitive Surgical Open House, which generously invited FIRST robotics members to rotate through three interactive stations. Students used and explored several state-of-the-art surgical robots, attended presentations delivered by Surgical Intuitive executives (which detailed their own education and career paths) before they opened up for questions. The students also had the opportunity to tinker with the DaVinci robots and complete select challenges, which was followed by a short build challenge where they were tasked with designing a mechanism to lift a marble off the ground.
Granada
On January 30th, 2020, students from Cupertino Robotics attended a S.T.E.A.M. night at Granada Islamic School to showcase our progress throughout the season. Two FTC bots were brought as demos for those who wanted to experience driving and maneuvering a robot. As the kids drove the robots, we discussed the different characteristics of the club. Because many of the kids present were elementary to middle schoolers, many parents and their children were exposed to FLL and FTC for the first time, sparking their interest and leaving many eager to sign up. The event overall yielded a very positive result not only with the enjoyment of the kids and parents, but also the lasting impact it will have on a school with no previous experience with robotics.
KAST
The week after Thanksgiving, some FTC students visited Sedgwick Elementary to teach a classroom of 5th graders about some valuable skills we use in robotics. We decided to focus on an extremely valuable engineering skill: the Design Process. After presenting about what the design process was, we gave them cardboard and some skewers to build a machine that dropped a small ball in a cup. The machine had to be a Rube Goldberg machine. The 5th graders became clearly engrossed in the challenge, frantically building machines with innovative designs. They managed to do so while having a lot of fun collaborating with their peers.
Middle School Workshops
The middle school workshops are a series of workshops for middle school students to be introduced to Robotics with simple engineering challenges. The Hyde Engineering Workshop was an event we held at Hyde Middle School in order to give students an opportunity to become more familiar with the engineering process. Students participated in a fun challenge to build a mechanism that lifted marbles onto a table. Overall, we had a solid turnout and it was really interesting to see what kinds of creative contraptions the middle schoolers built!
Diwali Festival (2019)
This week, FTC visited the city of Cupertino's annual Diwali festival at Memorial Park in Cupertino. Students from FTC were able to showcase our FTC and FLL robots to attendees of the festival. Visitors were able to navigate one of our FTC robots through an obstacle, which often sparked their interest in robotics and FIRST. Many of the young attendees were excited to drive around the robot and were looking forward to joining robotics in the future. Through this event, Cupertino Robotics was able to interest people of all ages in robotics, and how they can get involved.
Crashzone
On February 11th, Cupertino Robotics members attended Crashzone--an afterschool next to Hyde Middle School--to fascinate the middle schoolers about robots. We started with a marshmallow-tower design challenge to give them insight into using collaboration and the students were especially eager to participate because of the food factor. Nevertheless, during the challenge, the motivation and perseverance present among the students became extremely apparent as seen by the heights of the tallest towers: 17”, 16.5”, 15.8”. Many of the students had not been introduced to the concept of building robots and were not aware of the program at Cupertino High so they were keen on finding out how they could join our program.