We are an internationally appraised high school academy in the Bay Area
promoting STEM through competitive
robotics & community outreach.

Help us help others

Member resources

Welcome to Irvington Robotics! If you're a member, please review the Irvington Robotics Academy Handbook and sign the Robotics Contract Release Form on pages 5 and 6 by Friday, June 10th 11:59 PM. Email the signed form to irvingtonrobotics@gmail.com

Missed the intro meeting? Check out the slides.

By the Numbers

Our student-run academy started as a club in 2010 to build “a student-run organization which teaches local Fremont, CA students technology and engineering principles through the design, construction, and testing of robots.” With generous support and contribution of the community and its members, our organization has grown and developed throughout the years.

Outreach

One of our main goals is to reach out to the community and even the greater Bay Area. We’ve done this in a variety of ways, from hosting robotics tournaments to running enrichment camps for young students.



First Tech Challenge Tournament, 2011

In 2011, we hosted our first ever First Lego League and First Tech Challenge tournament, which brought teams from all over the Bay Area and beyond.

Robotics Summer Courses (2014–2016)

Since then, we have begun outreach programs that focus on teaching robotics to younger children. From 2014 to 2016 we have taught summer courses to children in Lego Robotics using NXT kits using a third party curriculum.



Robotics Winter Camps (2016-2017)

Starting the winter of 2016 to the winter of 2017, we decided to write our own robotics curriculum and use it to teach elementary school students the basics of engineering a robot over the holiday break. These camps were taught by a rotation of members and are in partnership with a local community center.

Robotics Summer Courses (2018–present)

Starting in the summer of 2018, we expanded upon the curriculum developed for our winter camps and hosted our first ever Arduino Robotics Summer Camp. Our 2018 camp, hosted at Nurture Kids Day Care was very successful, and thus this year we are bringing this camp back! With an updated curriculum to stay up to date with the latest equipment and software, we are hosting our 2019 camp in partnership with non-profit Coding for All at Nurture Kids Daycare and Genius Kids Daycare. Interested? Please visit the camp website.

Horner Middle School Outreach (2018–present) -

As part of Irvington Robotics’ outreach efforts, several team members have worked continuously over the past year to set up robotics teams at Horner Junior High, the middle school that feeds into Irvington Robotics. Throughout the year, these members have mentored two newly-formed VEX IQ teams, teaching them many of the same skills used in VEX EDR and preparing them for Irvington Robotics. In preparation for the middle schoolers’ move to high school robotics, these members also developed a competition robotics transition curriculum, which is planned to be adapted for use for all Irvington Robotics newcomers. They are currently working to guide many prospective robotics members to be prepared for the upcoming new VRC season.

Maker Faire (2012-present)

But our biggest (and most anticipated) outreach event is our annual trip to Maker Faire Bay Area, where we bring a robot and a field to let young students drive our robot and inspire them to pursue robotics and STEM in the future. Our award-winning booth is one of our most effective outreach tools.


AboveTop: Maker Faire 2016, LeftBottom: Maker Faire 2018

Angela Chan

Competitive Robotics

We’ve participated in several robotics tournaments throughout the years. In 2010, our first year, we competed in two distinct robotics tournaments: the First Tech Challenge (FTC) and the Botball Educational Robotics Program. Then, starting in 2012, we shifted our efforts solely to FTC until the 2015–2016 school year. In that year, due to various reasons, we dropped out of FTC and switched to the VEX Robotics Competition, which has a smaller set of teams but a wider reach.

Throughout the years, our teams have won numerous awards for our performance:

We've come a long way since we started. In 2019, we had the opportunity of competing at the national Create US Open Robotics Championship. This competition provided an amazing experience to the members that went, and we performed very well with a final ranking of 24th nationally. Our team performed this well with old equipment! we weren’t able to get VEX’s newest equipment due to funding reasons as we are a student-run club. Despite this huge equipment disadvantage, our ingenuity and strong work ethic compensated for our losses. Please sponsor us if you are interested in sponsoring our efforts and building interest in technology and robotics.

Robotics Events

We also host robotics qualifiers for Bay Area teams to help them advance to the state championships.


Sponsors

The things that we do would not be possible without our generous sponsors.
We would like to thank all the organizations that continue to help us on our journey.
Want to help us make a difference in our community? Contact us.


Contact Us

Looking to contact or support Irvington Robotics? We love forming partnerships!