Over 115 California high school engineering teams gathered at La Cañada High School for the FIRST Tech Challenge DECODE season kickoff on September 6, drawing more than 1,200 participants and family members. The event launched this year’s robotics competition, where students design and build robots to compete in challenges that prepare them for STEM careers through hands-on engineering experience.
What you should know: FIRST Tech Challenge is a global nonprofit program that engages students ages 4-18 in team-based robotics competitions designed to build future-ready skills.
- Teams work with mentors throughout the year to design, build, and program robots for competition.
- The program serves as a pipeline, with students potentially advancing from LEGO robotics to more complex challenges as they progress.
This year’s challenge: DECODE requires robots to collect spherical “artifacts,” launch them into goals, and organize them into “classifiers” based on decoding an obelisk during matches.
- Robots must stay within strict 18 x 18 x 18 inch size limits for most of the match.
- Teams face the additional challenge of launching game pieces across the field.
- The endgame requires two robots to squeeze into a single 18 x 18 inch square during the final 30 seconds.
Beyond the competition: The kickoff featured 13 workshops covering design for manufacturing, scoring strategies, and tournament management.
- Students could examine an advanced FRC robot from Falkon Robotics at Crescenta Valley High School, showing the next level of competition.
- Referees held Q&A sessions in the North Gym to clarify rules and tournament procedures.
- Studica Robotics sponsored giveaways including motors, servo hubs, and merchandise.
Why this matters: Programs like FIRST Tech Challenge address the growing need for STEM education by providing practical engineering experience that traditional classroom learning often lacks, helping bridge the skills gap in technology fields.
Recent Stories
DOE fusion roadmap targets 2030s commercial deployment as AI drives $9B investment
The Department of Energy has released a new roadmap targeting commercial-scale fusion power deployment by the mid-2030s, though the plan lacks specific funding commitments and relies on scientific breakthroughs that have eluded researchers for decades. The strategy emphasizes public-private partnerships and positions AI as both a research tool and motivation for developing fusion energy to meet data centers' growing electricity demands. The big picture: The DOE's roadmap aims to "deliver the public infrastructure that supports the fusion private sector scale up in the 2030s," but acknowledges it cannot commit to specific funding levels and remains subject to Congressional appropriations. Why...
Oct 17, 2025Tying it all together: Credo’s purple cables power the $4B AI data center boom
Credo, a Silicon Valley semiconductor company specializing in data center cables and chips, has seen its stock price more than double this year to $143.61, following a 245% surge in 2024. The company's signature purple cables, which cost between $300-$500 each, have become essential infrastructure for AI data centers, positioning Credo to capitalize on the trillion-dollar AI infrastructure expansion as hyperscalers like Amazon, Microsoft, and Elon Musk's xAI rapidly build out massive computing facilities. What you should know: Credo's active electrical cables (AECs) are becoming indispensable for connecting the massive GPU clusters required for AI training and inference. The company...
Oct 17, 2025Vatican launches Latin American AI network for human development
The Vatican hosted a two-day conference bringing together 50 global experts to explore how artificial intelligence can advance peace, social justice, and human development. The event launched the Latin American AI Network for Integral Human Development and established principles for ethical AI governance that prioritize human dignity over technological advancement. What you should know: The Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, the Vatican's research body for social issues, organized the "Digital Rerum Novarum" conference on October 16-17, combining academic research with practical AI applications. Participants included leading experts from MIT, Microsoft, Columbia University, the UN, and major European institutions. The conference...