FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is a global robotics community with teams spread across 110 countries, with primary focus on advancing STEM education. FIRST Tech Challenge is a category of robotics competition developed by FIRST covering grades 7 through 12. Teams design, build, and program a robot to compete in an alliance format against other teams.

Java The Hutts is a FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) team. FTC season starts in September each year with a new game revealed each season. Teams build and program a game-specific robot each season to score the maximum points. There are 3 league meets and a league championship (usually in February) that qualifies teams to proceed to the Florida Championship (usually in March) and from there teams advance to the World championship (in April). JTH is one of the top ranked teams in Florida, we were also part of the winning alliance (3-alliance team) that won the World championship in Apr 2022.

FIRST website – https://www.firstinspires.org/

JTH website – https://www.javathehutts.org/

Apart from building robots, FIRST teams also engage in community outreach to promote FIRST and robotics within our community. JTH conducted over 50 outreach events last season. It is our hope and goal to bring/promote robotics to the underserved areas in our community.

Here are some noteworthy global outreach activities we have done in the recent past:

Mentored a robotics team in Nigeria under the FIRST Global Corps program.

Currently working with a team of students in South Africa where we have started a robotics club

Working with students in Sri Lanka to help start a robotics club