Photo By Michael Smith | The drive team for Team 6657, the Arborbotics, operated their robot from the alliance...... read more read more
Brendan Stevens is a software engineer at Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division. On a Sunday in March, he stood in the pit area at FATHOMWERX, the workshop floor where teams repair and adjust robots between matches, helping students troubleshoot their own.
His team had a problem.
The robot was driving in the wrong direction. Controls were inverted. Forward was backward.
The cause was a gyroscope, a sensor that tracks orientation. Stevens' team powered up their robot in the staging area, then walked it around the field perimeter to its starting position. By the time it arrived, the robot had reversed its heading. The gyroscope tracked every degree. The robot thought it was still facing the staging area.
"We had been turning on our bot in the staging area," Stevens said. "We've done a 180, so by the time we're on the field, we couldn't figure out why controls were inverted. It took us three matches to figure that out."
He was not the only NAWCWD engineer there.
The 2026 FIRST Robotics Competition brought 42 teams and more than 1,400 students to FATHOMWERX, a 60,000-square-foot public-private innovation lab at the Port of Hueneme operated in partnership with Naval Surface Warfare Center, Port Hueneme Division.
The event ran March 6-8. FIRST, For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, is a nonprofit that runs student robotics programs in more than 110 countries.
The competition challenges teams to design, build and program robots from raw materials in six weeks. Students do the engineering.
For the engineers watching from the pits, that is the point.
NAWCWD delivers warfighting capabilities through research, development, test, evaluation and sustainment. The next generation of engineers it needs had not yet entered the workforce. Some of them were on this floor.
Patrick Schuett, director of Air Wing Integration and Interoperability/Electronic Warfare Effects at NAWCWD, addressed students during Sunday’s opening ceremony at FATHOMWERX. He competed in design-build competitions as a student.
“I can trace a straight line from those experiences to the job I’m in today,” Schuett said. “The lessons you’ve learned, the leadership skills, the technical skills, those are all things that you now have to lean on, and they will take you far.”
Stevens’ team cracked the gyroscope problem Saturday afternoon. The fix took seconds. They had lost three matches learning it. Stevens called it a turnaround.
With his team out of playoff contention, Stevens gave the controls to a freshman. The younger driver loved it. A competition loss is still a training rep.
Gonzalo Figueroa, a mechanical engineer, mentored the same team, Team 4711, the Flying Aces, of ACE Charter High School in Camarillo. He was there for a reason that had nothing to do with the scoreboard.
“It’s just something I wish I got to do in high school myself,” Figueroa said. “I wasn’t aware of robotics programs. It’s my way of giving back to the community, helping others pursue a path and learn more about it.”
In the pit, Figueroa identifies what’s wrong, nudges students toward a solution and lets them learn by doing. Dan Byrd, an engineering technician at Naval Surface Warfare Center, Port Hueneme Division, mentors Team 7327, the Metal Jackets, of Oxnard High School. He watched students replace circuit boards and rewire connections between matches.
“All of this stuff you see out here was just chunks of metal in January,” Byrd said. “They did everything.”
Computer-aided design, precision machining, fabrication: the same skills engineers use to develop weapons systems and test equipment at NAWCWD. The school shops are smaller. The discipline is the same.
A second event followed March 13-15 at Ventura College Sportsplex in Ventura. Three NAWCWD DODSTEM-sponsored teams competed at both events.
Seventy-two qualification matches ran before the top eight teams selected alliance partners for the playoff bracket.
Jessica, a junior in her first season with Team 3512, Spartatroniks, of Orcutt Academy High School, broke down the competition as a match played out on the field beside her.
In Rebuilt, the 2026 challenge, robots score game pieces called fuel into a hub. Matches open with a 20-second autonomous period where robots run coded programs without driver input.
During the driver-controlled period, the active scoring hub alternates between alliances. Which side goes first depends on which alliance scored more fuel in autonomous. The match ends with robots climbing a tower for bonus points.
Teams make tradeoffs. Jessica’s team removed its climbing mechanism to concentrate on scoring.
“We actually just decided to take off our climber because it was taking up too much energy out of our robot,” she said. “So, we decided that it was worth just focusing on the shooter rather than the climbers.”
Her team’s calculation paid off. Spartatroniks finished sixth in qualification rankings, advanced to the playoff bracket and won the Quality Award.
The NAWCWD-mentored Flying Aces also reached the playoffs. They won a second-round bracket match before elimination in the third round.
Joseph Dawson teaches robotics in the Oxnard Union school district. His students include the Metal Jackets. He makes sure they know what surrounds them.
“I tell them: this is the manufacturing mecca of the world right here in your backyard,” Dawson said. “This is a place to be.”
| Date Taken: | 03.19.2026 |
| Date Posted: | 03.19.2026 15:02 |
| Story ID: | 560949 |
| Location: | POINT MUGU NAWC, CALIFORNIA, US |
| Web Views: | 24 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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