For five years, sophomore Vibhu Siddha’s robotics journey has taken him across the country and connected him to new people through FIRST robotics, a competition that challenges teams to design, build and program robots to complete tasks. Now, he’s continuing to learn and give back to the community.
Siddha’s journey began in sixth grade, when he moved to the district too late to apply for the middle school VEX robotics program. Instead, he applied and was accepted into the school’s burgeoning FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) program, FIRST’s middle and high school robotics pathway.
Siddha quickly found his passion for robotics, spending hours working on the robot every day, taking it between home and school. He created and added many structures to his team’s robot, including a turret — a mechanism considered highly advanced for rookie students.
His efforts were rewarded when his all-rookie team captained a finalist alliance and advanced to the regional competition. As he continued through middle school, his team made Regionals in both seventh and eighth grade as well.
In his freshman year, Siddha joined the SHS’s FIRST Robotics Challenge (FRC) team MSET Fish and integrated into the team structure. Through his dedication, he became a valuable member despite being a rookie to the more-advanced robotics team.
In his freshman season, he was promoted to lead the small team working on the primary scoring mechanism, despite it being his very first year in the FRC program — a testament to his strong work ethic as well as his technical and soft skills.
“When I first started a robotics leadership role, I did most of the work myself,” Siddha said. “Over time, I have learned to distribute work and train others to make the team as a whole better, not just myself.”
While competing, Siddha made many friends across multiple other teams. From veteran teams that he could learn from to brand new teams that he could give tips to, he has continued connecting with others.
“Vibhu and I were on the same alliance in the playoffs at one of my team’s tournaments,” said Nithin Lokesh, a member of FTC team Terrabats 14525. “Despite my team’s robot facing challenges in the final matches, Vibhu always had a positive attitude, helping us with anything that he could, and we ended up winning the tournament.”
He developed the app extension Raycast, allowing members to search both FTC and FRC teams and view their statistics from their computer. This extension helped teams who needed to quickly find the statistics of their partners or opponents during the heat of the competition.
Outside of the competitive realm, he also started Project Pulse, an outreach initiative that provides rural schools in India with resources to learn the basics of electronics along with STEM concepts like the engineering process. Now in its second year, Project Pulse plans to expand with the introduction of technologies such as Arduino boards, customizable microcontrollers easy to build and program.
“I decided to start Project Pulse when I realized that a lot of initiatives help underprivileged students focus on programming and CS, but not many focus on electrical or mechanical engineering,” he said. “I decided that simple kits to teach young children about logic gates and binary, both fundamental parts of modern computers, would be both cost effective and educational.”
Siddha also expanded his love for robotics, programming and STEM to other projects. He used his knowledge of Computer Aided Design (CAD) gained from hours spent designing robots to create Minion — a combined USB hub, headphone jack, potentiometer and display with buttons to play games.
Siddha is also currently working on building a FIRST Robotics Competition trading card game, similar to the Pokémon Trading Card Game. The early version of this project is already available, and it is shaping up to be an amazing addition to FRC. It allows users to “collect teams” by opening booster packs, which you can currently get by entering event codes into the app. Siddha plans to implement an actual game with these trading cards.
With his future, Siddha looks to continue expanding his skills.
“I plan to major in both CS and mechanical engineering,” Siddha said. “I’m grateful for all the friends I’ve made along my journey, and I am very excited to continue with my passion as a hopeful robotics engineer.”
