8033 Highlander Robotics is going to the world championship in Houston, Texas!

We are a young team and we are thrilled to be going based on our robot’s strong outcomes this season as two time finalists against powerhouse teams with 10-20 years of experience and world titles under their belt. Founded four years ago, this is only our second year competing in person due to quarantine. Learn more about us in this recent CNET story (a global tech magazine with over 65 million monthly readers) called Meet the Teens Who Live and Breath Robotics about our team and FIRST Robotics Challenge (FRC).

We need your help!!! Our goal is to raise $10,000. Registration is $5000, robot transit is over $1000 and there’s also airfare, lodging and food to cover. We are entirely self-funded and receive no financial support from our school. We have over 50 kids on our team and several dedicated non-parent mentors. We'd like as many as possible to be able to attend this often life changing event. All contribution amounts help us get everyone there! Thank you for your support!

More about us:

This year's robot, Paddo the Frog, has performed exceptionally well! Our team has qualified for the world championship in Houston, Texas and we could not be more excited!

Highlander Robotics is a student-led team that was founded in 2019 in Piedmont, California to create opportunities in STEM education for high schoolers in the Bay Area. With the help of our experienced mentors, students learn industry-level design, engineering, and programming skills in addition to making friendships and connections. More than anything, we value inclusivity. We have no application process, meaning any high school student, with or without prior knowledge, can join our team. We are the biggest team within a 25 mile radius that is a community team (rather than a school-based team). One in five of our students is from out of district with a total of 10 schools being represented.

Our impact expands beyond the learning environment and enrichment opportunities we provide our team members. In just the four years since our founding, we have dramatically impacted our community. We partnered with Piedmont High School and Piedmont Makers to help raise $420,000 for a brand new engineering lab. We also specified and assembled the equipment needed for the lab. This year we made safety training materials to expand the lab access to the school, students, and community groups.

We use our technical skills to meet real world needs. We CAD’ed and fabricated custom parts such as keyboard covers and story blocks for Oakland Unified School District's (OUSD) Special Ed department's non verbal kids. Not only did this project save OUSD’s special education department over $2000 and lots of time, it was also the perfect project to train and inspire our new recruits.

We have become leaders of STEM education within the city of Piedmont and beyond through our extensive outreach. We are the capstone program of the largest FIRST league in northern California. In just four years since our team was founded, our FIRST community’s size has doubled from 30 teams, to now over 60 teams of all levels. We have volunteered at 14 different local FIRST events, including most recently, hosting a FIRST Tech Challenge competition entirely on our own. Additionally, we have mentored FIRST teams for a total of over 400 hours, and assisted robotics teams from as far away as Taiwan and Nashville. Last season, the mayor and city council of Piedmont named May 22, 2022 Highlander Robotics Day in recognition of our leadership in STEM education.