By Salah Uttard

Cybersonics is a First Robotics Competition (FRC) team located at Palisades High School. The team has about 15-20 members. Founded in 1995, it is a STEM-themed club where you design robots, build those robots, and compete against and with others.

In cybersonics, you learn real-life skills such as welding, programming, media (photography, social media, etc), engineering, and many others. These are useful skills for many reasons: they can become your career, help you get ahead in college, and give you the knowledge on how to work with these skills in everyday life. 

What is FIRST Robotics? FIRST Robotics has many different aspects, such as FRC, FTC, and FLL. These are 3 different areas of FIRST, Cybersonics is an FRC team which is the First Robotics Competition. This is for the high school level. Each year there is a new challenge, meaning that you have to design a robot to do different things on the field. These games can be offensive, defensive, or somewhere in the middle. 

What makes cybersonics special? Most recently, the game was called DIVE, it was a water-themed event, and Cybersonics was known for being “the world’s best algae bot.” This was a memorable title to have gained because it helped other teams recognise us. Every year Cybersonics has made it to the world’s level and in 2003 we became a hall of fame team by winning.  

In total, FIRST had about 79,000 teams in 2024. With only the FRC, 3,468 active teams were competing, from 28 different countries. During the season, there are about 2 competitions that all teams go to during different weeks of build season. These competitions are located all around the world, but you go to the ones that are in your region (Cybersonics is FMA First mid Atlantic). These competitions have about 30 teams that attend them. Depending on how your team ranks in these first 2 competitions determines if you get to move on to the Districts event. About 70 teams per district get to move on; there are about 139 teams that are active in just FMA alone. After the District events, the top 23 teams out of the 70 that made it to districts get to the world level. At the World competition there are only about 600 teams that actually get to go and participate.

Cybersonics is a very inclusive club. An active member in cybersonics, Silis Mandic said “I get along really well with them, everyone is pretty open to talking, everyone jokes around, and they are all so fun to be around.”  

If you are interested in robotics, consider joining the Cybersonics team!