On the morning of Saturday, January 7th, FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) teams gathered in chat rooms and robotics labs, anxiously awaiting the reveal of the 2023 game “Charged Up”.The concept for “Charged Up” revolves around renewable energy, the theme which is changed every year by FIRST organizers. 

 Every year, FIRST robotics teams around the world are challenged with the release of a new game, in which they have six weeks to design, build, and test a robot before competing against other teams. These competitions are a very engaging and exciting way to expose students to programming, engineering, and networking skills that they otherwise would not gain until a college setting. 

This year’s reveal video presented a tough engineering challenge for the teams participating, with inflatable cubes and cones being the new game pieces used for scoring. Another element of this year’s game which will be tough to tackle is a platform which must be balanced on at the beginning and end of the match in order to score points. To get a visual of what the game reveal for this season looks like, you can visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zpflsYc4PA.

Immediately after the game release, it is off to the races for the over 3,800 teams that participate in FRC, with teams immediately getting to design and prototyping after viewing the reveal a couple of times. Build season is a large time commitment for students around the globe, who develop a mild insomnia managing schoolwork and robotics at the same time. This does nothing to diminish the anticipation and excitement which goes into kickoff however, which was present for the Bizarbots on Saturday morning. The team has a very positive outlook going into this season, with almost double its members from last season and a first time appearance in the New England District FIRST Championship. We’ll see how things pan out in this coming season ahead of kickoff. 

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The Robotics team presenting ideas during their kickoff meeting