Churrobots robotics team qualifies for World Championships

The Churrobots, the Hope Horizon East Palo Alto Robotics Team, was part of the winning alliance at the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) Silicon Valley Regional earlier this month They have now qualified for the World Championships and are looking to fundraise $40,000 for their trip to Houston April 17-20, 2024. This will be their first time at the World Championships.

Angel Fernandez, the electrical sub-team lead, is thrilled at this opportunity. “When I first joined this team, I wasn’t too sure about it. I was thrown right into wiring on my first day and it was intimidating to jump right in. But then it was so cool to see it all work together.” he said, “I for sure never imagined going to Worlds.”

The Churrobots are a community team drawing students from over 10 different schools, including 11th grader Mateo Valencia and 12 grader Jamie Orzechowski who attend Tide in Menlo Park along with 11th grader Chris Almazan at Sacred Heart Prep in Atherton. The overwhelming majority of the students will be first generation college students, and many alumni have already gone on to study fields of engineering at schools like University of Michigan, Harvey Mudd, and UC Davis.

The team began in 2019 with two students who were highly motivated to continue their experience after graduating from the FIRST Lego League team. The Churrobots use the garage of one of their coaches as a workshop where they design and build an industrial-size, semi-autonomous robot over the course of six weeks.

Greg Corsetto, the lead coach, thinks the world championships will be an important marker for the students’ lives. “I think the whole experience there will mean a lot to them and really encourage them in their career pursuits or future goals past high school.”

He has seen significant growth in the team over the past few years. “This year, we attempted our most complex robot yet, in terms of functionality and abilities on the field to score. The students have really been able to up their game and follow the whole process through from designing to building to test and troubleshooting.”

The team is composed of students and adult mentors and also has strong family support. Corsetto notes, “Not only are families helping their students to balance their schoolwork and robotics, families have been involved in supporting the team with providing meals and planning celebrations. That effort has helped distribute the workload that the coaches normally take on and families have taken on more ownership in the team.”

In the FRC competition, teams are seeded following a round-robin format, and then teams form alliances of three to compete in the playoffs. During the Silicon Valley Regional, the Churrobots (Team 8048) joined Alliance Number 1 captained by Blazing Bulldogs of San Jose High School (Team 581) and Citrus Circuits of Davis, CA (Team 1678).

At the Sacramento Regional March 13-15, the Churrobots ranked #5 after playing in 15 out of the 76 qualification matches. The team is estimated to have scored around 23 points per match. Then because of this rank, the team was the captain for Alliance #3 in the playoff rounds. Unfortunately, the team only made it through the first round of playoffs as their alliance team robots had some ongoing challenges from the physicality of the game.

The Churrobots are fundraising to send the team to Houston, and supporters can visit this site to help. Hope Horizon is a registered 501(c)3 non-profit organization, and all donations are tax-deductible.