FTC Team Captain

// the program

As Team Captain of my FIRST Tech Challenge robotics team, I led both the technical and outreach sides of our work, shaping how we built and shared our ideas. I developed computer vision models to improve our robot’s navigation and built a front end website to document our progress, while also diving into mechanical concepts like gear ratios to design custom 1 to 1 gearboxes. Along the way, I helped secure corporate sponsorships and mentored younger teams, coaching three to the FIRST Lego League World Championships.

// the monologue

Two days before our regional robotics tournament, my garage had turned into mission control, and at 11 PM we were stuck on a bug in our autonomous program that capped us at 15 points instead of the 50 we knew was possible. After hours of frustration, exhaustion set in and conversation faded, so I forced a break by pushing a chaotic GitHub pull request filled with corny jokes, a Rick Astley script, and a ridiculous new robot name, “The Charminator,” then asked for a review. Groans quickly turned into laughter as we spent ten minutes arguing over jokes and names instead of code, and when we returned, everything clicked; we spotted a timing issue in our vision function and fixed the bug in 30 minutes, turning hours of grinding into a quick breakthrough powered by a moment of humor.

// program notes

• ✦DEBUGGING NEVER STOPS!
• ✦It's easier to shift gears quickly than ruminate on a problem endlessly
• ✦Tacobell is best food for any type of team lock-in