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About the 2025-2026 Challenge:
About the 2025-2026 Challenge:
This season’s challenge, DECODE™, invites students to explore the power of artifacts and unlock hidden mysteries through hands-on engineering, coding, and strategy. Teams design and build robots to complete themed missions on the 12’x12’ game field, earning points in both autonomous and driver-controlled periods. Each match highlights teamwork, creativity, and the thrill of competition.
Team 6996 – Oncoming Storm will compete in three qualifying tournaments this season, with the goal of advancing to the New York Excelsior Regional Championship and ultimately the FIRST Tech Challenge World Championship in Houston, Texas. Along the way, students gain real-world STEM experience, build leadership and communication skills, and grow as innovators ready to take on any challenge.
October Update
October Update
Our demo robot has been transformed into a dedicated sensor robot, giving the software team a platform to build their coding skills. They’ve been learning advanced techniques with imaging, odometry, pinpoint tracking, and other critical control systems that will support this year’s competition robot.
Meanwhile, the hardware team has been deep in research and testing. While physical progress has been slower than hoped, the group has been focused on developing detailed strategies and a step-by-step build plan to align with our overall game strategy.
With the November 1st deadline quickly approaching, the team is gearing up for a busy end to October as we move from planning to construction — turning all that hard work into a fully functioning robot!
September Update
September Update
September marked the exciting start of our 2025-2026 FIRST Tech Challenge season – “Decode.” Students jumped right in by watching the official kickoff broadcast and studying the new archaeology-themed challenge. Over the month, they worked in small groups to brainstorm robot concepts, sketch ideas in CAD, and build early prototypes for artifact collection and scoring mechanisms. Our software team began testing drive code and sensors, while the communications team created new outreach materials and updated our engineering notebook layout. The whole team came together to discuss strategy, test field elements, and begin designing this year’s competition robot. It was an energetic start to the season as we began decoding the game piece by piece!
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