By Mia Hanuska
Grabbing, aiming, and shooting, Team 3482 Arrowbotics’ 2024 offseason robot Apollo spins into the lineup. With an entirely new design from onseason, Apollo is made with completely new motors and subsystems the team has never worked with before. Arrowbotics competed Apollo at Capital City Classic 2024, where the team ranked 30th out of 51 teams. Through building Apollo, the team learned important skills they can’t wait to apply to the upcoming 2025 FRC season.
For those unfamiliar with robotics, Team 3482 Arrowbotics is Westmont’s FIRST Robotics team that competes annually against hundreds of other high school teams from around the globe. Arrowbotics is completely student-led; all parts of the robot and team are managed by Westmont students. Each year, the team creates a new robot based off a new prompt given by FIRST in January. Currently, Arrowbotics is in its offseason, meaning the team is preparing new recruits for the upcoming 2025 season in the winter and early spring.
Apollo, named after the Greek god of the sun and brother of Artemis, the name of the team’s onseason robot, represents months of hard work. Spending days in the sweltering heat during the California heatwaves, the team carefully built, wired, and coded the robot over the summer and, once school started, up until competition. Apollo is nothing like the team has created before, it introduces a rack-and-pinion pivot, entirely new motors, under-the-bumper intake, and rollers. Plus, software did an amazing job implementing features that would’ve been impossible with Artemis—automatic game piece detection and centering, automatic shooting, scoring from a distance, and more. Truly amazing!
Arrowbotics looks forward to the 2025 season and cannot wait for another great season. Return in April to see what the team creates this year!
