Riviera Robotics, founded in 2016, is a nonprofit robotics program open to high school students in the Santa Barbara County. The team is comprised of around 20 students and 6 mentors from the fields of engineering, computer programming, electrical design, business, outreach, and finance. The team was formed by Kally Zheng, Graham Wren and Amy Dixon, students from Dos Pueblos High School, in response to the Dos Pueblos Engineering Academy's retirement of the renowned Team 1717.
In their seventh year of competition, Riviera Robotics has grown in size as students attending all three major high schools in the Santa Barbara Unified School District have joined their ranks following last year's successful season! In the 2020 INFINITE RECHARGE Competition, the team competed in the Los Angeles North Regional before COVID-19. Next year, the team hopes to return to World Championships.
Such aspirations require great funding, allowing them to purchase build equipment and maintain a build space for both the construction of the robot and the fostering of youth in STEM. Please consider donating to Riviera Robotics to support the next generation of student robot constructors, or consider joining for an experience like no other.
Any contribution you can make to the team will go directly into providing a better experience to the students currently participating in the robotics program as well as increasing the opportunities for students who participate in the coming years.
Our mission statement:
To engage students with science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and business through successful participation in the FIRST Robotics Competition in conjunction with community outreach.
To further our mission statement, all members of Team 5818 are deeply involved in the design, fabrication, assembly, programming, and presentation of the robot. This provides relevant, hands-on engineering experience. In addition, Riviera Robotics students are responsible for all of the business operations entailed in building a robot, including logistics, fund raising, legal work, finance, and purchasing supplies. Members of our team have the rare experience of running a corporation as high school students, giving them the skills needed to succeed in other business ventures.
Finally, Riviera Robotics is committed to promoting STEM education throughout the community. In the year following its inception, Riviera Robotics gave demonstrations at seven local schools, three technology companies, and an MIT Startup Forum. We intend to continue our community outreach this season, fulfilling all aspects of our mission statement.