On a Saturday night in January, the members of the Boone County PiBotics team gather together, enjoying snacks and waiting on a big announcement.
They join other robotics teams around the world that participate in FIRST Robotics competitions.
Soon, they will find out what this year’s challenge will be, and then they will have just weeks to design and build a robot with specifications to beat the year’s challenge.
Every year, all the FIRST Robotics teams get the details of the competition at the same time, and they immediately jump into action.
“There are a bunch of whiteboards, and we come up with some designs, kind of get an idea for the time, and then different intakes and stuff, and that puts into motion what our final design is going to be,” team member Blake Atkins told LINK nky when we visited a practice days before the team left for the FIRST Robotics World Championship in Houston.
PiBotics is a student robotics organization based at the Ignite Institute. It was first started as the Ryle Raider Robotics team in 2011 at Ryle High School. In 2013, it opened up to all Boone County Schools and Ignite students and was renamed PiBotics.
As described by the team’s lead marketing and media manager, Kylee Wishart: “It’s just a group of weird, wonky kids getting together to build a robot.”
The team practices Tuesday through Thursday, and during competition time, they also throw one in on Saturday. While their school was on spring break and practice wasn’t mandatory, most of the team still showed up, practiced and helped make buttons and other merch to hand out at their upcoming competition.
Every year, FIRST Robotics competitors are given a different challenge that their robot must complete. Once the challenge is announced, they must start from scratch.
This year’s competition, announced on Jan. 4, is “REEFSCAPE.” During this challenge, students will “use their STEM and collaboration skills to explore life beneath the surface of the ocean. Along the way, we’ll uncover the potential in each of us to strengthen our community and innovate for a better world with healthy oceans,” per the FIRST Robotics website.
In real-world terms, the team must build a robot that can solve several challenges and participate in an obstacle course-style timed competition. REEFSCAPE involves removing “algae” (a large rubber ball) from a “reef” and then putting “coral” (PVC pipe) on the reef.
Each action the robot performs successfully gets the team varying levels of points. The highest number comes from the “barge” challenge, where the robot grabs onto a metal cage on a chain (known as the “crab trap”) and must lift itself off the ground.
Before the drive team takes over control of the robot, it has 30 seconds of autonomy, during which it executes a series of commands through previously written code.
To better understand, check out a rendering of the challenge from FIRST Robotics:
The PiBotics team competed in their first competition of the season, the Rocket City Regional, on March 13 at the Von Braun Center in Huntsville, AL.
While the whole team works together on creating the robot, which this year is named “Octo-Pi,” they all have their own specialties.
Among others, there is the drive team, which operates the robot, the pit team, which manages repairs and other aspects of the robot, and, what the team is making a big push for this year, a marketing team.
“It’s so cool to see how kids from everywhere can come together and make such a cool thing. And I wish more people knew about it,” said Wishart.
Wishart said the group also runs like a business. The team has collected an impressive group of sponsors and they also have to market themselves to other teams at competitions as well as to the judges.
One very big challenge the team had to face recently was almost getting shut down.
In 2024, the team received an email from Boone County Schools Deputy Superintendent James Detwiler stating that the district was reconsidering the program due to financial and safety concerns.
In July, in addition to sending over 30 emails to the superintendent, the team attended a Boone County School Board (which also governs the Ignite Institute) meeting where they advocated for their team.
“We take charge of everything: designing, building and managing ourselves, which teaches us leadership, teamwork and problem solving,” said team member Emma Wilson in front of the board in July. “We learn to handle real-world engineering challenges, manage our time, and communicate effectively. This hands-on experience gives us competence and prepares us for future careers and, more importantly, it instills a passion for innovation and collaboration.”
Emma Wilson’s mother, Stephanie Wilson, who has two daughters on the team, said that a year ago, her daughter would have never spoken in front of the board, and she credits PiBotics with getting her out of her shell: “They really found their home,” Wilson told LINK nky.
Team member Layla Born said that over the summer, she made what she referred to as her “save robotics post” on the FIRST Robotics Facebook page. She told LINK that the post explained their situation: “It was like ‘Hey, we’re losing our team. We need a coach, someone help us.’”
The team said the post gained lots of traction and over 50 teams reached out to offer advice, help and support. “It went all over the country, and the world, to places like Israel and Libya,” said Born.
Following their months-long campaign, the team was reinstated.
This enthusiastic advocacy didn’t just win them their team back; it won them an award.
At the regional competition in Huntsville, the group took home the “Judges’ Award,” which Wishart described as an award given out, “when you do something that really doesn’t fit quite into all of the other awards, but you stand out. We stood out because we were able to save our team. The judges noticed, took note of that, and were able to give us the judges’ award.”
The team won another award that members said bought them a ticket to the FIRST Championship in Houston.
They won the “Impact Award” at the Miami Valley Regional on March 29. Wishart said it is always the last award announced that day, and “secretly, you kind of always want to win one.”
To qualify for this award, the team must make a presentation, write a 10,000-character essay, answer 13 short questions and ask the judges a question. There is also an option to make a video, which PiBotics did.
In part, the presentation that the team provides to the judges explains how they brought their team back from the brink of shutdown. It includes LINK nky’s original report of their plea to the school board, flyers from makers’ expos they’ve attended and other proof of their space in the community.
This is the first time PiBotics won the Impact Award, and the team was ecstatic. Born, who couldn’t be at the regional because she was attending prom the same day, said she was watching the live stream while getting ready, hoping for the possibility of a win.
“I had a full face of makeup, my hair already done, and everything. I was watching the stream, and all of a sudden I heard Pi- and I immediately started bawling,” said Born.
While making it to the world competition was incredibly exciting, it also came with a lot of expenses. After winning the Impact Award on March 29, the team had two weeks to raise $38,000 for the school board to approve the trip.
Through everything from selling sponsorships to cookie sales, the team was able to get the funds, and they left for Houston on Tuesday.
Every team member and mentor LINK spoke to during PiBotic’s practice said the same thing: it’s all about teamwork.
“We don’t use students to build robots. We use robots to build students,” said the team’s coach, Andrew Brown.
During the matches, each team is paired with two “allies.” The three teams and their robots work together, using each robot’s strengths to complete the challenge.
Team member Kyla Wolter is the backup drive coach, safety officer and during competitions, she has the job of scouting. While other teams compete, she sits in the stands and watches other bots, keeping track of a scouting app designed for these competitions.
The goal of scouting, Wolter explains, is to be strategic about who you’re picking as allies. For the preliminary round of a competition, alliances are randomly assigned; however, for the finals, teams can pick who they’re working with, and the better you score, the earlier you get to choose your teammates.
While alliances are working together in teams of three, you are competing against another team alliance of three teams.
Wolter, however, explains that “the groups can participate in ‘coopertition,’ where the two competing alliances can choose to cooperate with each other for the benefit of both teams.” “FIRST is really all about teamwork,” said Wolter.
Another part of scouting involves team members standing in front of their pit and answering questions from other competitors about their bots.
The pit, a 10-foot by 10-foot space, is where the robot is stored and worked on during and between matches. It’s also where the team gathers all its equipment, merchandise and other marketing materials. The space is tight, and the competition requires all of their stuff to be contained within it.
Drew, the team’s lead technician, said that in the pit, “We’re always doing something on the robot, whether that’s fixing it, improving it.”
“It’s a really compact space, which I think helps create such good friendships, because you’re like right next to each other,” said Wishart.
The competitions also have a “Pit Admin” where teams can request help, parts or other assistance with their robot. The admin will make an announcement, and whoever can help will do what they can for the team in need.
Team members attribute this collaboration and their hard work to getting them where they are. Which, as of the publication of this article, is at the FIRST Robotics World Championship.
The team won their first match on Thursday and is waiting to compete today. Watch the team live here. Find more information about PiBotics at pibotics.info.