Our rookie robotics team is an organization of home-schooled students from various communities in the North Dallas area who previously did not have access to a FIRST robotics program. Because the FIRST competitions involve creating robots that work partly autonomously, we took our name from the first two autonomous robots, Elmer & Elsie, which were created by William Grey Walter in 1949.

      In our first few months of existence we have been able to be highly effective. Our team president has been very active promoting FIRST and robotics in general to the communities in North Texas, reaching . more than 750 families who are members of large home-school-support groups like Frisco HIS, PEACH, MArCH In our first season we have already secured advancement to our regional championship tournament by winning the qualifying tournament hosted by University of Texas at Arlington on January 24, 2015.

 

Tyler : Team Founder, Team Captain, Student Coach, Programmer, Builder, Grants

I am 17 and in the 12th grade. My family moved to TX in the summer of 2014, and I could not find a local robotics team to join, so I started a new team. I participated in FTC last year on a rookie team and my experience has driven me to pursue an education in engineering and has sparked my passion for robotics. I have loved everything about my experience with FTC. Being on two rookie teams in row has taught me a lot about challenges and failures, but also has motivated me to push myself and my team members to strive to learn new and hard things. I also am on a highly competitive mock trial team, I love to cook, solve problems and study Mandarin Chinese.

Nicolette : Lead Programmer, coordinated and taught club members how to prepare the engineering notebook, designed team logo

I am 17 and a senior in high school. I joined this team because I thought it would be fun. I like video games, reading and drawing. I will be attending college at UTD majoring in computer science. I plan on getting a master's degree in CS. I am grateful to FIRST and this team for exposing me to programming and I look forward to continuing to program as a career.

Grady : Lead Programmer

My name is Grady and I am 16 years old and in the 11th grade. My interests are playing video games, swimming, fencing, game programming, Legos and Nerf. I joined this robotics team to learn more about robotics, to have a fun challenge and because I am interested in remote controlled objects. I have learned a lot by being a part of this team. I have learned how to code in Robot C, and this year, Java, as well as work better on a team.

Melissa : Programmer, Builder

My name is Melissa Schwisow and I am 15 years old and in 11th grade. My interests are software programming, listening to music and reading. My reason for joining a robotics team was to build and program a robot. I have learned what is involved in building a robot and programming it. Also the brainstorming and creativity needed to do this! A goal I have is to finish building an iPhone app and submit it to the app store.

Alex: Lead Builder, Programmer

My name is Alex Mejia. I am 15 years old and in the 10th grade. I enjoy running and learning any type of science. I joined FTC because I wanted to see if I would do well in this activity. Another reason I joined was to have a better knowledge of robotics. Nothing is simple. Also everything can be possible, you only have to look at it from a different angle. My goals are to attend college and the High School Nationals in cross country.

Ethan : Lead Builder, Programmer

My name is Ethan Lanting. I am 14 years old and in the 9th grade. I am interested in computer science and hope to major in this when I go to college. The reasons I joined FTC is that I wanted to try robotics and increase my knowledge of programming. I have learned more about motors and other technical stuff, that robotics is fun.

James-David : Builder

I am 14 and in the 8th grade. My interests are engineering and engineering with Legos. I am interested in building the robot. I thought it would be really fun. I learned how to attach metal pieces and motors and how to sand objects. I would like to go to college and become an engineer.

Grayson : Builder, Team Photographer

My name is Grayson and I am 14 and in the 8th grade. I like working with computers and playing video games. I wanted to do robotics because I haven’t gotten to do a lot of programming and building before so this is the perfect opportunity. I learned how to build a robot and use certain tools and program things. My goals are to become a pilot and attend a business college.

James: Builder

I am 13 and in the 8th grade. My interests are Minecraft, programming simple mods. I learned more programming skills. I want to study robotics engineering in college. I'd like to work on military robots like Boston Dynamics' "BigDog" and MIT's cheetah.

Jaden : Builder

I am 13 years old and in the 8th grade. My interests are building legos, playing video games and listening to music. I joined FTC because I like to build things and building robots sounded like a lot of fun. So far I've learned to work as a team, some programming skills and building with pieces I've never built with before. It's even helped with my social skills. I plan on continuing robotics through high school and then go to college and become an engineer.