Power Play

Power Play was the 2022–2023 FTC season, requiring teams to place cones on junctions of varying heights across a circuit-board themed field. The challenge rewarded strategic thinking about cycle routes as much as raw mechanism capability. Entering the season as the newly elected sole CAD Lead for the varsity team was a significant step — previous seasons had shared design responsibilities, but this year the full architecture of the robot would be mine to own from concept through competition.

The design process for Power Play began with mechanism benchmarking — researching approaches used by top teams in previous seasons and at early-season invitationals to understand the design space. From there I developed Jaybots' robot around a linear slide-based arm that could reach all junction heights, paired with a custom cone intake. Every mechanism was modeled and validated in OnShape before any parts were ordered or fabricated, which helped us avoid the mid-season redesigns that had cost time in previous years.

The season produced strong results — the robot earned several awards recognizing both technical design and overall team performance. More personally meaningful was the experience of taking complete ownership of a competition robot's design and seeing it succeed. The lessons learned about design discipline, iteration speed, and communicating design intent to a build team carried directly into my subsequent work on Center Stage and beyond.