Welcome to Bad Robots 1014

This website is designed to document information and lessons that the team has learned in a centralized place. If you’re not from Team 1014, you are still welcome to read what we have to share.

What is Team 1014?

We are a First Robotics Competition (FRC) team run through Dublin City Schools. High school students from the district get the opportunity to join the robotics team to gain valuable, real-world experience working on a time-sensitive engineering program. Without all the jargon, it’s building a robot to do things (and maybe learning something while doing it).

The number 1014 simply means we were the 1014th team to join the First Robotics Competition. The team was created in 2003 and subsequently named “Bad Robots” due to the robots not wanting to work properly, and the name has stuck over the decades.

What is the First Robotics Competition?

FRC is a program run through First Inspires. They are an organization focused on “…preparing young people for the future.” There are a lot of other marketing words and phrases that all sum up to providing students an opportunity to learn skills and gain experience.

The actual First Robotics Competition starts in January, but the team meets several times before that to get as many people up to speed as possible and to do some initial planning (referred to as pre-season).

The specifics of each competition vary every year, but follow very similar concepts. Teams build a robot to perform specific tasks in order to score points. In hopes of keeping this documentation relevant, I highly recommend checking out the First Inspires website to learn what the game is during your season. If you want to really dive into the specifics of the game, you can just look up FRC game manual [YEAR] and will likely find a document outlining all the…incredibly specific…details.

The (rough) timeline

Teams are given roughly 1-2 months before regional events start, and these events last roughly 6 weeks. A robot doesn’t need to be finalized by week 1, but the goal is to have a fully built robot by then so things can be tweaked and tuned before we go to a regional. On average, our team only goes to two competitions in a season.

When it comes to meeting times, the mentors will send out a schedule for when the team meets. As of 2026, we use GroupMe and Schoology to communicate this information, along with any other relevant information you might need. If you are not in either of these, please ask either a mentor or another student on the team for a link to join / receive an invitation to the groups.

What is Pre-Season?

Pre-Season refers to a few meetings that happen in the weeks prior to the actual competition starting. This is mainly dedicated to getting new members up to speed before we start building.

What is Post-Season?

After week 6, assuming the team doesn’t make it to worlds, we enter post- season where the team does some planning, preparation, and generally tries to reduce the work we have to do once season starts.

What else is there to know?

There is no specific order to how you should read the documentation, but I recommend checking out the resources page to get a short but explicit description on how to find things. Think of it like a table of contents, but with descriptions.