The #TeamREV 2023-24 season recap keeps rolling! Meet this week's featured team: FRC Team #8046: The Lakerbots.

Tell us a little bit about your team’s background.

Team 8046 is an FRC Team located in Meredith, New Hampshire from Inter-Lakes Middle High School and was founded in 2019. The Lakerbots are partnered with Boeing, Gene's Haas and BAE Systems. The Lakerbots did two design reviews with a Boeing engineer. The mascot of our team is a loon. 

The Lakerbots live in the Lakes Region which is the focus of our team. Following that, every year we name our robot after a lake or mountain located in the Lakes Region. This 2024 season, we named our robot Percival after Mount Percival located in New Hampshire.

So far, our team has been preparing for the upcoming season over this summer. Fundraising, prepping our shop, and hosting summer camps for students.

What are a few achievements your team was proud of this past season?

The 2024 season was the 5th season for the Lakerbots. The founding students had graduated, which meant some students needed to step up and lead the team - which is just what they did. This season's robot was the most owned by the students, meaning the students are the ones who designed, manufactured, assembled, wired, and programmed the robot, with only guidance from the mentors. 

When it came to our first competition, the intake was not functioning and the swerve code was not working. This led to a disappointing competition but the students didn't give up. They worked hard to iterate the designs and re-code the swerve drive to come back better at the next competition. The hard work paid off, and the Lakerbots did amazing at UNH. We were able to qualify for districts and were finalists in the Ganson field. 

The Lakerbots were also honored to receive the Sustainability Award for the second year in a row. We strive for environmental and team sustainability as a team and we have seen results. 

This season, the Lakerbots partnered with FRC Team 319 to found the Lakes Region Robotics Center, which has a full sized practice field open to all. We received great feedback and all teams who came down to use it were very thankful. 

The Lakerbots had a lot of achievements to celebrate this year and are ready to continue and make more this upcoming season!

What has your team been working on this offseason?

The Lakerbots created a Women in STEAM Club. This club was created to inspire and encourage young women in our school district in science and engineering. Our first project was to build a second robot to compete with an all-girls drive team at competition. This project was led by the girls with the help of the other Lakerbots along the way. The robot was named Franconia, after Franconia Notch located in NH. Franconia competed at it's first competition, Summer Heat in Falmouth, Maine. It was very successful and we can't wait to compete again this fall. 

The Lakerbots are co-hosting with FRC Team 319 a Girls Behind The Glass event the day after Battle Of the Bay, which is hosted by 319. Franconia will be competing at this event! We are very excited to do more fun projects with the club to inspire Women in STEAM!

What was your favorite part about being in the 2023-24 class of #TeamREV?

The Lakerbots use REV products on all our major mechanisms, and utilize the software features that the SPARK MAX and SPARK Flex supply. The Lakerbots find the quality of the products to be very good and suited for our needs. 

The Lakerbots also enjoy being ambassadors of Team REV by supporting many teams with software help. We were able to assist FRC teams 4925, 6991, and 7913.

Visit the Lakerbots on these platforms:

• Website
• Instagram
• TikTok
• YouTube