Robotics Journey
Building a Robot
called Gary
A timeline of my FTC robotics journey across two seasons, the events we attended, and everything that happened along the way.
October 2024
Joining Robotics
I joined my high school's FTC robotics team for the Into the Deep season, brought in as a secondary programmer. The team had already been setup with the name "Bubble Busters". Over time my role shifted and I ended up doing mechanical engineering instead. The first few months were mostly just getting to grips with everything such as: the tools, the new kit, and how FTC competitions actually work.
Dec 2024
First Scrimmage
We visited our first scrimmage at Heriot-Watt University's National Robotarium in Edinburgh, which was an incredible facility to see. At this point we hadn't fully constructed the starter robot so we couldn't really test properly, but it was really useful to see how other teams were approaching the game.
Jan 2025
Robot Construction
After the scrimmage we pushed harder to complete the starter robot, which was a big milestone for the team. It was the first time we had a fully functional robot to actually test and drive around. I spent a lot of this period on the mechanical side rather than programming, helping to physically put it all together.
Mar 2025
Hearts Stadium Scrimmage
We attended another scrimmage, this time at Tynecastle Hearts FC stadium in central Edinburgh. We had a more complete robot by this point so it was great to get proper testing on an actual game field. We had to get the train in due to issues with the minibus transport, but it was a fun adventure nonetheless. I also put together a video montage from the day.
Apr 2025
The Qualifiers
After all of our hard work, we attended the qualifiers back at the Heriot-Watt National Robotarium. It was nerve wracking but exciting, and I wasn't expecting it to go as well as it did. We ended up getting all the way to the end and winning. Although this didn't mean going to the nationals due to the way the pairings work. Instead we got the wildcard which qualified us for the nationals.
Jun 2025
London National Finals
We attended the national finals at London's Copper Box Arena, which was an incredible experience. It was amazing to see teams from all around the country and the scale of it was something else compared to the Scottish scrimmages. We made it through the placement rounds but got knocked out fairly quickly in the knockouts when our alliance partner's robot broke down mid-match. Still, we ended up finishing as the highest performing team from Scotland.
Oct 2025 - Feb 2026
New Season Begins
The new season started with a new challenge: Decode. We pretty quickly tore down the robot from the previous season to reuse parts and designed a completely new structure. I modelled the new design in CAD software and 3D printed it using my Bambu A1 Mini, doing a few revisions of parts to get them fitting properly. I also took on a lot more of the programming this season, working on camera vision and rewriting the tele-op controls.
Jan 2026
Team Rebrand
Along with the new season we decided to rebrand the team with a new name and logo. I designed all the graphics, and the team agreed to renaming us to "CtrlSea". I built the logo around our mascot Ram and Rom which is a plushie we bought while down in London the previous season. We also gave the robot a name this year: Gary.
Feb 2026
Qualifier Round 2
After spending a lot of my time after school working on Gary's programming for things such as: camera vision, autonomous mode, and better teleop controls we headed back to the Heriot-Watt National Robotarium for the qualifiers. A lot went wrong on the day. 3D printed parts snapped, the camera vision just wasn't working, and we had control hub connection issues throughout. Then in the final round the large printed ball cassette system got snapped clean off the drivetrain. We didn't qualify. It was a bit of a disappointing end to what felt like our strongest robot yet, but I'm still proud of everything we put into it.