Dos Pueblos High School’s (DPHS) Octobots Robotics placed second at the FIRST Robotics (FRC) Southern California State Championship on April 12. Despite mishaps on the field, the team and its robot managed to recover and qualify for the world championships in Houston on April 28.

“It means a lot because most people on the team, I don’t think, have ever gone to champs so far,” said Sebastian Kuhn (11), hardware and Computer-Aided Design (CAD) lead. “So we were all really happy … that all our hard work and long hours paid off.”

According to Kuhn, the team encountered several minor electrical problems during practice matches that were patched up easily. However, the robot’s intake system was hanging outside of its structure during the qualification matches.

During these matches, the DPHS robot collided with other teams’ robots, causing the exposed intake system to break repeatedly.

“We had to replace some parts on that with not a lot of time between matches,” Kuhn said. “And then another time, the entire thing broke, so then we had to hot-swap the entire thing into a new one.”

Due to the issues with the broken intake system, the Octobots lost the first finals match. According to Oliver Håkansson (10), when they attempted to fix it, one of the motors burned out and began smoking on the fields. Determined not to give up, the team modified the intake system to function on only one motor and took the burned-out one out of use.

“The intake problem during finals was really stressful because we were sitting on the field and there’s … three thousand people all looking down [on us],” said Håkansson, software lead and drive team member. “But we were able to get our robot working in time, and we ended up performing as we would have liked.”

Furthermore, the Octobots’ robot is built with five cameras used to provide

information about its position on the field, which the team uses for aiming. During the competition, the cameras began disconnecting due to a lack of power.

“We run [the cameras] off of Orange Pis … and if they don’t get enough power from our power regulators, then they just turn off, and then they have to reboot up, which takes some time,” Håkansson said. “So then we’d periodically lose cameras if we were doing big maneuvers.”

Håkansson said the team fixed this problem by reducing the amount of power used. Although Håkansson said he was under a lot of pressure, he was able to pull through by narrowing down the problem.

“I try to think of a mindset of focusing on the key points of the problem to come up with a solution,” Håkansson said. “Not focusing on the overall problem of our robots, like what’s broken or something, just what’s broken, what needs to happen to come up with a solution on time.”

Although the team was able to pull through at state championships, Håkansson said that the team will need to continue reducing power usage before heading to the world championships.

The Octobots meet three times a week in preparation for competitions. Together, the weekly preparation time sums up to three hours. However, according to adviser Ashley Ong, many of the students also spend their free time “during the weirdest hours” writing code, designing CAD, emailing, and fundraising.

“I think the hardest part is just the scope,” Ong said. “Not only does the team have incredible scope for what they want the robot to do, [but] the competition is quite large. There are teams from all over the country. The expectations the FRC has for the robot are quite high.”

The Octobots team worked on a few improvements before the world championships and studied more advanced strategies suited to play against the top teams in the world. The hardware team also ensured that they have enough spare parts, and the software team fixed any remaining bugs.

“I’m most excited about seeing other top teams and having a chance to just play with all the top teams in the world,” Kuhn said. “There are a bunch of top teams here, but just teams all around the world [are] really exciting to see.”

The Octobots went to compete at the world championship. Though the team did not make it to the finals, they won several competitions and had a good overall showing.

Updated information 5/13/26