Stories
Class 9 robotics team places third at the national FTC qualifier
Six students, eleven weeks of Saturday mornings, and a drivetrain that finally stopped shearing its gears the week before the event.
- Published
- January 20, 2026
- By
- Sandeep Kulkarni, Robotics Coach
- Reading time
- 1 min
Our senior robotics team finished third out of 42 schools at the national FIRST Tech Challenge qualifier in Pune on 18 January, earning a place at the national finals in Delhi in March.
The team — Zoya Qureshi, Karthik Sampath, Nidhi Bandaru, Aryan Deshmukh, Sara Thomas and Vikram Iyer, all Class 9 — built the robot across eleven Saturday mornings in the Gachibowli robotics lab. Their drivetrain sheared its gears twice during testing in December. The fix, in the end, was a redesigned motor mount that Nidhi modelled and printed on the lab's own 3D printer.
Coach Sandeep Kulkarni was keen that the credit go where it belongs: "I did not build this robot. I unlocked the lab on Saturdays and made sure somebody remembered to eat lunch. The engineering was theirs."
The team is looking for a second-hand set of REV control hubs ahead of the finals. If your workplace is retiring any, the robotics lab would like to hear from you.
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