About us
A team of students who like building things that work
We're a community robotics team from Sammamish, Washington — middle and high schoolers from different schools, plus mentors who've been where we are. Founded 2023; been busy since.
The story
From LEGO league to Houston
We started as a FIRST LEGO League team — two seasons of building LEGO robots and learning how competitions work. In 2023 we moved up to FIRST Tech Challenge as team 23511, a community team in Sammamish, Washington, with members from middle and high schools across the area.
Three FTC seasons later, that rookie team has competed at the FIRST World Championship in Houston, placed 2nd for the Inspire Award there, and taught robotics to more kids than we have members — by a lot.
We're an open team by default: our CAD, our code, and our engineering documents are public, because we learned from teams who shared theirs.
New to FIRST?
What all these words mean
If you're new to all of this, here's the two-minute version.
- FIRST
- A global nonprofit that runs robotics programs for kids from kindergarten through high school. Think of it as a sports league, except the sport is designing and building robots.
- FIRST LEGO League (FLL)
- The elementary and middle school program, built around LEGO robots. It's where most of our team started — and what our classes prepare kids for.
- FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC)
- The program we compete in. Teams of middle and high schoolers design, build, and program a robot from scratch each year to play that season's game, then compete at tournaments from local leagues up to the World Championship.
- The Inspire Award
- FTC's highest honor — it judges the whole team: engineering, documentation, outreach, and how a team carries itself. We took 2nd place for it at the 2026 World Championship.
What we believe
Straight from the team charter
Learning never stops
There's always a way to keep growing, day by day. New members ship real work in their first month; veterans level up by teaching.
Share what we solve
Open-source software, public CAD, free curriculum. If we figured something out, the next team shouldn't have to start from scratch.
Accessible to all
No membership fees, ever. The barrier to engineering should be curiosity, not cost — that's why sponsors and class fees fund the team instead.
And have fun
It's in our team charter, word for word. We spend hundreds of hours a season on this because we genuinely like building things together.
The people
Ten students, three subteams, one robot
Everyone owns something real, and subteams overlap on purpose — the best mechanisms come from build and programming arguing early.
Design & Build
CAD, prototyping, and fabrication — from drivetrain geometry to the last 3D-printed bracket.
Programming
Robot code, autonomous routines, and SolversLib — the open-source library we maintain for other FTC teams.
Outreach & Business
Classes, sponsorships, newsletters, finances, and the engineering portfolio judges read at competition.
Leadership
Saket
Captain · Design & CAD Lead
Arush
Programming Lead
Viraj
Build Lead
Ishaan
Outreach Lead
Ajay
Finance Lead
Plus five more members across programming, design, build, finance, and outreach — full roster and photos coming once everyone signs off.
Mentors
Seven mentors with FIRST backgrounds support the team, led by Head Coach Zheng on the software side. Several are alumni of local FIRST teams — Pack of Parts (FRC 1294), the Jaybots (FTC 16700), and Voyager 6+ (FTC 12869) — plus an industry mentor from Amazon Robotics.
Keep going
See the work
The proof is in what we've built — robots, classes, and resources other teams actually use.