By Mia Hanuska and Kathryn Tanaka
Team 3482 Arrowbotics has officially completed their 15th year in FIRST Robotics Competition! 2026’s REBUILT official gameplay has come to a close, and the team is now winding down, preparing for summer and offseason, and saying goodbye to their seniors.
March 20–22: CA Sacramento District Event
The CA Sacramento District Event marked the first-ever District Event Arrowbotics competed in. With changes to the schedule putting matches closer than ever to each other and pushing practice matches to the same day as load-in, the team struggled to adjust to the new quicker format. With an unfortunate crash into the TOWER in their first match, the team lacked the time between matches to fix their broken intake, and shifted to a defensive strategy. Focusing on shoveling FUEL into their alliance zone and to the human players, the team’s robot, KLEIO, ran into some unexpected, uncontrollable issues. With the breaker turning itself off, Limelight cameras not loading their video stream, and a mysterious CAN bus error that no one had ever seen before, the bot struggled despite the team’s best efforts in most of the matches.
One notable match was Quals 73, where not a single robot on either of the alliances had a functioning shooter, and instead the human players were directly responsible for all points scored. Teams 3482, 9125, and 10212 managed to pull away a win by a mere 1 point with a final score of 45-46.
Arrowbotics ended the competition ranked 35th with a record of 4-8-0 (win-loss-tie).
KLEIO on the starting line before a match
The 2025–2026 team after SACDE
March 24–April 1
With the intake still dysfunctional from the crash at competition, the team made the executive decision to completely redesign and remake the entire subsystem in the eight days before their next competition. After long nights of CAD, and extended meetings of machining and mechanical, the team created a new rack and pinion roller intake, a stark difference from the original pivoted wheel intake.
Alongside an intake redesign, the team focused on tuning the shooter and climb subsystems. With the gracious hosting of Los Gatos High School’s 972 Iron Claw FRC team, Arrowbotics spent Saturday at 972’s half-field, testing and getting advice from their incredible mentors. With Iron Claw’s help, the team discovered and fixed multiple issues, getting their climb and shooter working in the span of seven hours.
April 2–4: CA Contra Costa District Event
Armed with updated mechanical and code, Arrowbotics arrived at the Contra Costa District Event with a little more confidence than before. However, with Thursday spent on finishing the intake construction, the team had little time to test other elements of the robot. This led to a working shooter and intake, but ineffective handoff between the two subsystems, an issue that was fixed by the end of Saturday, with only three qualification matches left. An extremely unfortunate match schedule placed Arrowbotics up against the number 2 ranked team (Paly Robotics, Team 8) three separate times in nearly back-to-back matches. Furthermore, by Sunday, despite having a working handoff, the intake ran into more issues after the first match, rendering the robot solely reliable on the human player station. In the team’s last two matches, the human players forgot to leave FUEL for KLEIO to collect, and forced 3482 to play defence as the bot had nothing to shoot.
3482 ended the competition ranked 31st with a record of 3-9-0 (win-loss-tie).
KLEIO during her autonomous routine
Drive team students Mia Hanuska (12), Max Cooley (12), and Rijul Acharya (10).
Team members who attended CACDE with the robot
Upcoming Events
This year, Arrowbotics hopes to host a robot expo and demonstration in May where students, friends, faculty, and family will be able to see the robot in action. The team aims to have their robot running on a half-field replica of the real competition field. This will also be a chance to celebrate the seniors on the team, including the many exiting board members.