FIRST Tech Challenge rookie team from Baulkham Hills High School — six Year 9 students designing, building, and programming a competition robot for the 2026 BIOBUZZ season.
About the Team
Baulko Gearheads is a FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) rookie team of six Year 9 students from Baulkham Hills High School. We compete to develop technical, collaborative, and leadership skills through hands-on robotics design and competition.
FIRST Tech Challenge is a global robotics program where students design, build, and program robots in an alliance-based competition. Each season introduces a new game and a fresh set of engineering problems, with teams progressing from Qualifiers to the National Championship and, for top teams, the FIRST International Championship.
Develop hands-on engineering and programming skills.
Learn teamwork, leadership, and project management.
Apply real-world problem-solving techniques.
Gain exposure to STEM careers, industry practices, and meet new people.
Every season is an authentic engineering project. Our students work across four core disciplines to take a robot from concept to competition.
Designing and fabricating the robot's chassis, drivetrain, and mechanisms.
Wiring motors, sensors, and control hubs for reliable, repeatable performance.
Programming autonomous routines and driver controls in Java.
Analysing each season's game to plan and iterate winning strategies.
Team Organization
A rookie community team of Year 9 students from Baulkham Hills High School, competing in our first FIRST Tech Challenge season.
Team Journal
The 2026–2027 FIRST Tech Challenge season,
BIOBUZZ™, amplifies the excitement and energy found within the natural world. Teams program classroom-scale robots to follow autonomous commands before student drivers take control in two-on-two matches. Follow along as we design, build, and program our robot — from kickoff in September through to the National Championship.
Baulko Gearheads officially formed and set our sights on the 2026–2027 BIOBUZZ season. As a rookie community team of six Year 9 students, we started learning the game, the engineering design process, and how a FIRST Tech Challenge season runs.
After researching the recommended FTC hardware, we decided to build on goBILDA structural hardware and drivetrain components, paired with the REV Robotics control system — the REV Control Hub, Drive Hub and Expansion Hub — giving us a reliable, well-documented foundation to design and iterate on throughout the season.
For design, we chose Fusion 360 as our CAD software, using Autodesk's free education licence to model and iterate on our robot at no cost.
We've started by learning CAD software Fusion. Designed and printed two versions of FTC logo. Started assembling our first robot using goBILDA components and REV Robotics hardware.
We hit the ground running this August! We began the week by installing Mecanum wheels onto the robot and setting up the field for Navig8r, our second FTC challenge.
The 2026–2027 FIRST Tech Challenge season game is BIOBUZZ™ presented by RTX, set within the overarching FIRST® CANOPY™ season theme. Some team members stayed up late into the night to watch the live game reveal stream from Australia. To help design and produce custom parts for the robot, one of the coaches purchased a 3D printer and shared it with the team. Teams can review the full rules in the official FIRST Tech Challenge Competition Manual.
Once the season rules and game concepts were clear, we moved into design and prototyping. The team began exploring drivetrain layouts, possible mechanisms, and scoring ideas, while also starting to map out our build plan for the months ahead.
