ERC (Or East Robotics Competition) is a small-scale robotics competition our team developed as part of our 2022 training program. It was developed fully by student leadership and it functions to emulate an FRC build season in a lower-stress environment which enabled newer members to be more involved and to have more hands-on experience than in a regular off-season.
What is ERC?
How does ERC work?
Our new members are typically split into 2-3 different ERC teams containing students from all of our main 4 subteams. They are provided with a budget, a kit of parts, a game manual and a reveal presentation. Leadership members act as mentors, while 1st and 2nd year students have a chance to be in charge and have a bigger say in robot design. After around 6-8 weeks of building, it all culminates in an event held in November or December at our auditorium, which featured all the things students love about FRC: nostalgic music, team spirit gear, award, and enthusiastic announcers.
Although our team has traditional training programs to educate new members on the basics of FRC, we found that many students wanted more hands-on experience as part of their training, since with our rising member count, we struggled to keep everyone engaged. ERC provides a no-stress program to supplement our initial training and gives new members early hands-on experience in designing and building a robot FRC-style. Aside from training, it also increased our new member retention rate significantly, which allows us to reach more students.
Why ERC?
Future
We hope to continue organizing ERC in the future and to expand it to reach a wider audience in North Carolina. We also hope to invite middle school students from our district in the future to participate in order to inspire younger students to become interested in engineering. As always, our team will continue to have no barriers to entry (no fees or prerequisites, and nobody is turned away).