OUR STORY
2015-2016
We started as group called the Kuriosity Coding Club, made up of cute 10-13 year old friends interested in learning programming through Lego Mindstorms.
Later in the year, we competed in our first FLL competition with the name Kuriosity Robotics, FLL Team 15521, advancing to the Norcal Peninsula Regional Championship.
2016-2017
We starting making a name for ourselves in the FLL community as we elevated our FLL competition robot to new heights. Sponsored by Google, we changed the FLL competition forever by creating the first super mechanism, sweeping all objectives on half of the field.
We were invited to the FLL North American Opens (NAO) at LegoLand, competing with some of the best teams around the world. Our robot placed 2nd. Members on our team since 2016 are still haunted by how our robot failed its last turn on its last match at the NAO, costing us the 1st place.
The 2016-2017 season was our last in the FLL competition. We are proud of how we revolutionized the FLL game and cemented our legacy as a FLL game changer. Since then, we have mentored several FLL teams.
2017-2018
We graduated from the FLL competition to the FTC competition (First Tech Challenge). Rather than using legos, FTC robots were designed out of custom parts from any material. We relocated to a team member's garage, and prepared ourselves for our rookie FTC season.
With rookie's luck, we dominated in the Norcal Qualifier events, winning all 3 of our competitions and advancing to the Norcal Regional Championship. We competed to the end, but despite our best efforts, we did not advance to the World Festival, nor did we receive any awards at the Norcal Regional.
FTC teams were also challenged to create a lasting impact on the community, so we started hosting robot demos and EV3 classes, inspiring hundreds of kids in the process. We became friends with many teams, and participated in events with them as well.
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2018-2019
In our second season as a FTC team, we matured and developed core values and goals:
We wanted to build a high performing robot. We wanted to inspire STEM into our community. We wanted to serve the underserved.
Once again, we dominated the Norcal Qualifier events and advanced to the Norcal Regional Championship. Though we still did not advance to the World Festival, our progress was indicated by winning the Control Award (recognizing robot "control", or code) at the Norcal Regionals.
We partnered with SmartGurlz, a company dedicated to inspiring girls about STEM. We hosted bi-weekly, free classes using their products (Siggys), and the Lego Mindstorms EV3 that we used in our FLL days, all across the Bay Area.
We learned industrial practices from visiting tech companies like Cepton, a LiDAR startup, and Facebook.
We also had our most successful and biggest outreach initiative at our time: we became vendors for the Facebook Take Your Kid's to Work Day event. On take your kid's to work day, members of our team spoke on the "Kid's Making Impact Panel". We also taught a EV3 class to children. Throughout the whole day, we demo-ed our robot to kids, teaching them how to drive the robot. The amount of children we impacted is uncountable.
2019-2020
In our third season as an FTC team, we built a robot that took us to new heights. We won both of the Norcal Qualifiers we attended, and advanced to the Norcal Regional Championship, setting world records along the way.
At the Norcal Regional Championship, we were undefeated both through the qualification and elimination matches, and became the Norcal Championship Winning Alliance Captain. We advanced to the World Festival for the first time! During the awards ceremony, our team captain became a Dean's List Finalist, awarded, recognizing "the leadership and dedication of FIRST’s most outstanding secondary school students."
Sadly, the COVID-19 pandemic struck right after our regionals event, and the World Festival was cancelled.
Based on the success of the Facebook Take Your Kids to Work Day Event the year prior, we came back as vendors. We demo-ed our prior year's robot taught EV3 and SmartGurlz in scheduled classes. (Note: this was before pandemic)
Our Face Shield Initiative, amid the coronavirus pandemic, was our most impactful initiative to date. We designed our own Face Shields using our design experience and donated 5,000 face shields to underserved hospitals, businesses, and retirement homes.
To continue in inspiring STEM in our community during quarantine, we taught our first annual virtual summer camps. The camps were successful, and we made became friends with our students!