Embers Robotics is a community robotics team centered around a FIRST Robotics Competition team, Team 7583, Embers.
Our FRC team was formed in 2019 with 6 students and is now in its 5th year, having grown to 17 students.
Current News
2023
Even though it is off-season we have quite a bit happening at the moment:
- Fortnightly outreach with our friends over at PKYP (Port Kembla Youth Program) – reach out to them if you are interested in some free robotics on a monday after school
- Gearing up for another free after holiday program at Bellambi, keep checking back for dates, looks like end Jan 2024 at this stage.
- Ongoing engagements with Careways at Koonawarra
Lord Mayor’s Picnic
We were due to demo our robot again at the 2023 Lord Mayor’s picnic on 5th November but sadly this was cancelled due to weather.
PkLeap – Port Kembla Youth Program
We spent Tuesday morning 7th Nov running a robot demo over at PKYP as part of their PKLeap program. This is a program for year 6 students to help build resilience and wellbeing, and to prepare them for the transition to high school.
Great to see a lot of interest in STEM from some of the young woman there, hopefully some future female engineers!!
MFM – UOW My Future Matters – Oct/Nov
We spent 3 fun days over at UOW collaborating with Woolyungah Indigenous Centre (WIC)on their MFM program. This program aims to shape indigenous students awareness and aspirations of higher education and post-school options.
Six 1 hour sessions spread over 3 days with 14-18 students in each session. It was lots of work but lots of fun!!
Twilight Market at Elonera Montessori School
We spent a few hours giving the robot another run, this time at the Twilight Market at EMS.
The kids loved interacting with the robot and there was a certainly a lot of interest. We also had some Wedo kits in operation and many kids got to build and program robots for the very first time.
PKYP & WIEC
Outreach on 20th September at Warrawong High School as part of the PKYP Stepping Stones program.
Great fun with 14 students enrolled in the Intensive English Centre playing around with robots in a hands on session.
Lots of great collaboration and engagement and amazing robots built in the session.
Thanks Kate for allowing us into your classroom.
NAIDOC 2023 celebration at Koonawarra Community Centre 6th July
What a fantastic day it was at the Koonawarra Community Centre on Thursday 6th July. Embers helped the community celebrate NAIDOC 2023, and our hands-on Wedo 2.0 stall was very well attended. Thanks to all of those who visited us on the day.
Melbourne Robotics Tournament July 2023
Team 7583 attend MRT on the weekend July 1-2 – what an event!!
Despite sitting in 2nd position for most of the tournament and being 2nd alliance captain it was once again not our weekend to bring home the trophy, but I think we brought home something a lot more valuable and lifechanging than that. The team were amazing, so professional and showed impressive dedication, passion and kindness. Well done everyone !! Big thanks to the Future Robotics Alliance for organising such a great event and to our alliance partners, teams 4537 (Roboroos from SA), 9144 (Helix from Vic) & 9991 (Melb Girls College from Vic).
Outreach With Hayes Park Public School May/June 2023
We spent 4 weeks with Hayes Park Public School exploring STEM using the Lego Spike Prime and Lego Wedo 2.0 kits.
Great fun, great kids, big thanks to Al Marshall and Michael Honeywood.
2023 DDU Off Season Event – May 20-21
Our robot got another great run this weekend at the Duel Down Under up at MQU. Great weekend for our rookie driver team and some of our younger students who did us proud making it all the way to the grand final. Big thanks to our alliance partners (Bossely Park Wolfgang and RoboRebels). The most exciting part was watching Alliance 4 (us) knock out Alliance 1. You don’t see that happening often.
2023 Southern Cross FRC Regional Event – March 10-12th
WOW what a weekend!! Team 7583 competed in the Southern Cross Regional FRC event held at the Wollongong Entertainment Centre. It was amazing, inspirational, frustrating and tiring and everyone had a great time. We can’t wait to do it all over again in Melbourne at MRT in July. Big thanks to our alliance partners (The DropBears and Koalafied). We all worked exceptionally well together (triple balance on the charge station multiple times – woo-hoo) but unfortunately got knocked out in the play-offs.
2022
Lord Mayor’s Picnic
Greg was out and about on Sunday 6th November at the Lord Mayor’s Picnic with some of his friends. Big shoutout to the GongInvaders for joining us.
FISC
We conducted a robot demo at FISC on Monday 8th August for National Science Week. It was lots of fun and Greg, our robot, scored 2 baskets – great shooting!
KidsFest
A few members of Team 7583 spent the day at KidsFest at the Illawarra Light Railway Museum on Sunday 22 May.
It was a great day and fortunately the rain held off, all the kids seemed to have fun “feeding” balls to our robot Greg
Fitzroy Falls Adventure
Big thanks to The AVCON Foundation and Optimum Experiences who hosted us at Fitzroy Falls on 26th March.
They tested our leadership and collaboration skills and took us out of our comfort zones. Even the weather couldn’t dampen a great day!
2022 Southern Cross FRC Regional Event
March 2022 saw us compete at the WEC in the Southern Cross Regional for the Rapid React season.
It was great to be able to attend an event in our home city of Wollongong and there were some amazing robots on show.
We ended up getting knocked out in the semi-finals after being Alliance Captain 5. The event was taken out by the strong alliance of Barker Redbacks, Pymble Pride and Artemis.
