The Bridgewater-Raritan High School T.E.S.T Team 303 recently kicked off its 28th annual FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) competition season.

The beginning was marked by the kickoff event held on January 4 at Montgomery High School. Many team members from Bridgewater-Raritan were in attendance.

Team 303 is part of FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), a global organization that hosts different robotics competitions for high school and collegiate students. Team 303 specifically participates in FRC, the branch of FIRST that deals with high school teams and industrial-sized robots. 

Every January, the annual game is released for the FRC season, which spans from January to April. Teams then have 8-10 weeks to design, prototype, build, and test a fully functioning robot that performs all the necessary tasks to excel in the game.

The kickoff featured many workshops, ranging from robot bumpers, CAD 3-D design and pneumatics. However, the main event of the day was the presentation of the game video for this year’s theme, REEFSCAPES. 

The season consists of district-level competitions, held at local high schools. These are held in late March. At the end of the two events, the highest ranking 60 teams, plus the 8 FIRST Impact Award recipients progress to the FIRST Mid-Atlantic district championships at Lehigh University. Doing well here means continuing to the World championships, which are held in Houston, Texas in late April. 

So far, the team has expanded its meeting schedule to be more productive. Online strategy sessions were held throughout kickoff weekend, where members comprehensively planned out the best parts of the game to prioritize based on the team’s constraints and limitations.

Freshman Arshiya Agarwal, a new programming member, shared her comments on the start of build season.

“As a new member, it’s interesting to see the collaboration and dedication of the team and how we are able to work together in order to make progress on our robot this year. Everyone is encouraged to share their ideas and we’re really excited to see how the robot will turn out!” she said.

Looking forward, the team will now prepare to decide the season’s drive team with tests and tryout coming soon.