High Peak Youth Robotics – buzzing for this year’s FIRST Tech Challenge
Members of High Peak Youth Robotics’ group explain what the FIRST Tech Challenge is this year and how they are getting on with their tasks.
If this is your first time hearing about the FIRST Tech Challenge, read more on our general project page here.
What is the theme of this year’s challenge?
This year’s challenge is called ‘BIOBUZZ’ and it is about bees and insects pollinating plants.
What does the robot have to do?
The robot has to collect two types of ball, known as pollen and nectar. These are different sizes, colours, and weights. You score points by collecting and delivering the nectar and pollen into ‘hives’ which are the targets. The hives are tipping boxes located in the middle of the arena. Once a hive is full, it will tip to empty.
You can also score by placing the pollen and nectar into ‘flowers’ and by parking the robot at the end of the match in a specific place.
What are the rules of the competition?
The robot has to fit within an 18-inch cube at the start, but it can become a bit taller and longer during the match. They are not allowed to carry more than 4 balls at a time and there is a maximum of 8 large motors per robot.
Matches are 2m30s long. The first 30 seconds is an automatic period and the final 2 minutes is player-controlled. During the automated period, the robot operates on pre-written code. You then have a 10-second change over time into the manual control period.
There are many other rules: “it’s too complicated” says the captain of the Peak Gears team.
Want to know more? Watch FIRST’s introduction on YouTube here.
What are the robot design features?
Robots are usually built into a cube shape and have a mechanism to shoot spheres. They are mostly made out of metal but can also be made of wood, plastic, acrylic etc.
What are the design challenges?
Challenges include the robot having to handle different sizes of balls (collecting, shooting, and placing) and accurately shooting them into a small target.
What have you achieved so far?
Peak Bots have managed to build an effective intake system for the balls and a ball-size-filtration system. They have also started their portfolio (which they present to the judges) and is coming together well.
Peak Gears has built a prototype robot and started writing their portfolio.
The teams can attend a ‘scrimmage’ event in November, which is a friendly meet-up with other FTC teams. What do you want to achieve by the scrimmage?
Peak Bots want to have a robot which can accurately and consistently shoot the balls into their target. Peak Gears want to have a functioning robot.
What else are you planning to do this year to win awards?
Peak Bots is “aiming to do a noticeable amount of outreach” and Peak Gears is focusing on presenting a portfolio to the judges, something which they didn’t achieve last year.
What are you looking forward to most?
The captain for Peak Bots says “I am looking forward to seeing what ideas other teams have though of. Hopefully we can learn from them and improve the robots.”
The captain for Peak Gears says “trying our hardest, meeting other teams, and seeing other robots”.
What are you doing differently to last year?
Peak Bots is allocating different parts of the year to different parts of the project, including robot-building, outreach, and portfolio-writing.
Peak Gears is organising a sponsored swim to raise some more funding for specialist robotic parts.
If you’d like to take a look at the robots and see how the teams are progressing, members will be at the Dickensian Market in the Pavilion Gardens in Buxton on Sunday 22 November 2026, hosted by Buxton Mayoral Charity Committee.
The event runs 10am-4pm and there is free entry. Look out for us in the Octagon Lounge.
As part of the project, we also hope to arrange inspirational tours of local engineering businesses and robot-using factories and to invite local engineers to mentor the group during their workshops. If you’d like to invite the group to your business or help the group in their endeavours, please get in touch! Email highpeakyouthrobotics@funnywonders.org.uk.
Finally, we still have a couple of spaces available, if you know of any young people (12-18) in the High Peak who have an interest in robotics, coding, outreach, or competing. Sign-up via the project page here.
