Meet the Pirates:
ARRRR! Welcome maties! We are the Red Beard Pandas! We are a community team, with members from Christiansburg and Blacksburg, Virginia. Our team consists of students ages 12 to 18. We meet regularly to build robots and promote STEM throughout the New River Valley. We practice in a space generously provided by The Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center, 2270 Kraft Drive, Suite 1900, Blacksburg. We are organized under the New River Robotics Association, a 501c3 non-profit for STEM in our region!
For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) Tech Challenge is a global robotics program for middle and high school students. Experience the power, excitement and fun of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) with hands-on, minds-on activities - all with robots and coding!
The Red Beard Pandas are a team sponsored by the New River Robotics Association, an approved non-profit 501(c)(3) organization chartered to promote STEM through the use of robotics and engineering outreach in the New River Valley of Virginia. Our first FTC competition was the 2011 "Bowled Over" event as The Tuxedo Pandas. In 2019, our former coach retired and we changed our name to The Red Beard Pandas for the Skystone game. Many of our members have competed in FIRST Lego League for a few years and enjoy the advanced opportunities offered by this intermediate level of robotics. Our coaches are volunteers with engineering backgrounds and experience in Boy Scouts, Youth Sports, software development, and teaching. We think FIRST is an awesome concept: truly a sport for the mind, where we celebrate our geekiness and get excited about science, technology, engineering, and math!
Meeting new people:
Book us for an Outreach: We offer several unique Outreaches. If you are interested in us coming to an event, please reach out!
FIRST Lego League: The Pandas sponsor and mentor several FLL teams and give them space in our shop. We've started publishing quick-start guides in our "Robot in 30 Hours" project: publishing simple solutions 30 hours from the FLL reveal. See the Submerged Season (new in 2024), or our premiere Ri30H with Masterpiece (2023).
Helping Fellow FTC teams: From mentoring to scrimmages, we are always open to meet and help our fellow FTC teams! Reach out to us and we will get in touch! Sea you soon.