Almost every day after school, dozens of students flock to the MSET and VEX robotics rooms to participate in one of the most popular extracurricular activities.
The programs boast a combined nine teams, many of which have qualified multiple times for international level tournaments in their respective circuits.
But this isn’t the only way to do robotics in technology-obsessed Silicon Valley. Many other students go beyond the school’s teams and find a home in other programs.
Senior Diya Balaji is one of these students. Balaji has been one of the 54 members of the Space Cookies 1868 FRC robotics team ever since she was in 7th grade.
The all-girls team was founded as a partnership between NASA and Girl Scouts, and their lab is located in the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View. When she began high school, she elected to stay with her team..
“I’m not very familiar with the school robotics team since I’ve never been in it, but [the Space Cookies] environment is very helpful,” she said. “It kind of encourages me to take on leadership roles. I also like that it’s an all-girls team since it helps create that very supportive environment.”
Balaji works in the scouting subteam. She develops a scouting app to evaluate the performance of other teams in relation to her team and create a match strategy, hoping to maximize the team’s chances of advancing to the playoff rounds.
Balaji’s team also participates in many outreach events through the Girl Scouts organization, mostly focusing on introducing robotics to younger scouts in order to help them earn STEM badges and provide them an avenue forward in these subjects.
Moving away from a school team
Sophomores Eric Liang and Warren Yang were a part of the school’s VEX program for their freshman years
The pair now participate in VEX team 2041V, nicknamed “Locked in,” which meets outside of school.
The team originally consisted of Liang and five of his close friends from schools around the Bay Area that he met in competitions. Now, two additional members have joined, including Yang, who signed up in January.
As a self-funded team, 2041V does not have as many resources as the school VEX team or other organization-funded teams might have, leading the members to take up new skills in managing their money. In the beginning of the season, each of the members’ families donated money to cover the team’s cost for the whole season, and they used a spreadsheet to track and minimize money spent.
Since they do not have a dedicated room to do robotics as a school-sponsored team would, they instead meet in either Liang’s home or the home of another member.
Although Liang and Yang knew there would be challenges in taking this robotics route, they decided to leave the school’s VEX program for increased flexibility.
“In the VEX room at school, we were always required to have parental supervision while we worked, but now it’s a lot easier to work, since we can do it at each other’s homes,” Yang said.
At the kickoff of the 2024-25 VEX season, the team entered a rough patch, struggling to manage their time and resources effectively. They also had a lot of communication issues, which ultimately caused their robots to be done in a rush and not fully functional.
In order to solve this issue, the team became more active in communicating and separated times for building, programming and driving to maximize efficiency. The team also greatly improved when Yang joined the team.
“Adding Warren definitely helped a lot since he lives much closer to my house than our other teammates, so he could come more often,” Liang said. “He helped a lot with the programming and saved me a lot of time so that I could help with the hardware, so our robot improved as well.”
Despite their initial challenges, Liang and Yang were able to succeed in their new team after getting used to the different conditions. As of now, they have improved greatly as a team, winning four awards and two tournaments this season, and most recently, they have clinched a spot at the VEX Worlds Robotics Championship in Dallas, Texas.
“Transitioning to 2041V has been really challenging yet rewarding, and since we’ve qualified for Worlds, I feel like it was all worth it,” Liang said.
