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With interest in competitive robotics booming, Dripping Springs is about to be home to a new team, “Recoil Robotics”, mentored by a group of local teachers and professionals with combined experience exceeding four decades in the FIRST Robotics Competition and over 100 years in education and industry. Membership is open to all interested 14- to 18 year olds in the local area, regardless of school affiliation, providing an opportunity for homeschooled or private school students from Dripping Springs, Austin, Bee Cave, Lakeway, Buda and Wimberley to design, build and program robots to play in FIRST Robotics Competition events.
Starting in 1992 with only 28 teams, the annual FIRST Robotics Competition is now an international event with over 3,200 teams designing, building and programming robots to play a new game each year. Games are announced in January and teams have 8 weeks to complete their robot before competing in district, state and, if successful, world championships.
Teams are run as small businesses so people with interests in graphic design, fundraising, marketing and social media are also needed along with those keen on developing skills in mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and programming. If a student is interested in any of these topics, mentors will be on hand to help train them in new fields so no prior experience is necessary. The annual competition season kicks off on the first Saturday of January 2024 and runs through the end of March with two weekday evening and weekend daytime meetings scheduled each week during this period. Recoil Robotics is an initiative of the Central Texas FRC Alliance, Inc, a Texas nonprofit corporation. The ultimate goal of the group is to support a volunteerrun Open Innovation Tech Space in Dripping Springs providing shared workshop facilities and workspace for other similar teams and volunteers in the area. This space would also support any type of MakerSpace project that encourages youth to collaborate with others to tackle an open-ended challenge.
Anyone interested in learning more is invited to visit joinrecoil.org or to attend an information meeting at 6 p.m. on December 7 at Sententia Vera Cultural Hub, 4002 East Highway 290, Dripping Springs.
