Happy New Year From the Lobstahs!

We hope everyone had a CLAW-some holiday season—

The Lobstah Bots are starting off this year strong with great turnout at our Kickoff event, and we’re so excited for all that is yet to come. Stay tuned to see the electrifying teamwork and diligence that goes into the build season!

Crowdfunding:

Thank you so much to everyone who has supported us so far! We are truly grateful for your contributions: they are going to allow us the best shot for the 2026 competition season and, most importantly, keep the competitions accessible for all interested BUA-ers.

As of right now, there is about two weeks left of our fundraiser. If you haven’t already, please consider donating at https://lobstahbots.com/donate to help us reach our goal in this last stretch.

We also currently have an active donation match that has been gifted to us, so every donation contributes an extra $25.00, for the next 17 donors, no matter the size of the donation (e.g. donating $5.00 gives us $30.00 for no additional charge!).

Thank you again: we really appreciate you all and couldn’t do this without you!

Charging into the REBUILT Season — Kickoff, Prototyping, and More!

The Lobstah Bots at Kickoff!

This past weekend was the Kickoff of the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) season. Over the course of two days, our team explored the new archaeology-themed game, breaking down the field elements and rules, strategizing, and making prototypes for our 2026 robot!

On Day 1 of Kickoff, we excitedly watched the FRC livestream revealing the game, worked together to ponder game strategy, and split up to begin brainstorming ideas for the structure of our robot—an intake, indexer, outtake, and climber mechanisms—before presenting them to the rest of the team. On this day, we also defined some important goals for this season…

1. To continue building a welcoming atmosphere for new members to learn, participate, and contribute,
2. To qualify for world championships,
3. To earn new awards (in the past, we have won the Excellence for Engineering Award, Gracious Professionalism Award, and more. Check out our Awards Wall on our website: (https://www.lobstahbots.com/awards) to see more of the Lobstah Bots’ history!)
4. To build a functioning robot in six weeks

…and many, many more!

We closed out the day with a team dinner and a tour of the lab for our lovely Lobstah parents!

On Day 2, we reviewed the game rules with a game of Kahoot and watched a presentation on interesting potential strategies. This year’s game has a new element revolving around “phase shifts,” where only one alliance of teams (made of three teams’ robots) on the field can score at a time, so this extra time we focused on strategy as a group will be crucial. Afterwards, we split into two groups: one continued to focus on strategy, and the started prototyping robot features. The strategy group evaluated various aspects of the game rules and point-earning methods, ranking these game tasks from highest to least priority, whilst the prototyping group explored intake designs and hopper capacity.

For our rookie members, this was their first FRC build season experience, and they contributed by helping come up with ways to accomplish various tasks, as well as getting hands-on and building some awesome prototypes. They all quickly got into the spirit of FRC, scouring the game manual for potential loopholes and new strategies. We’re so proud to have such awesome new Lobstahs this season, and can’t wait for many more with them!

This week, we’re excited to continue prototyping, start building an “alpha bot,” make some models of archetypes (=possible robots we could make with different combinations of abilities and features, and that we give fun nicknames during the brainstorming process) make some decisions on the controls of the robot, and much more!

Here’s a sneak peak of our brainstorming:

Sharon Xiong’s (’27) archetype design, “Kangaroo”

Danesh Moghadas Zadeh (’29) archetype design, “Sea Cucumber”

Thank you for all of your support!

If you have any questions or are looking for other ways to get involved, please feel free to reach out to us at lobstahbots@gmail.com and we would be happy to respond! Until next time,

The Lobstah Bots