Ayush Patwari: Robot Code Lead Interview

Who is Ayush Patwari? 

Ayush Patwari is a senior at Northview High School and joined in his freshman year. He started in game design, later became an unofficial scouting systems lead, served as Engineering Head during his junior year, and now leads Robot Code and is our human player. Aside from robotics, he enjoys his time watching movies, playing video games, coding for fun, and spending time with family. 

What is Robot Code? 

Robot Code writes all the code for the robot. Students must know Java code to be a member. During bootcamp, they prepare for game season by writing practice code on other robots. During game season, students code robot vision and the autonomous and teleoperated periods. 

Q&A 

Q1: What got you interested in joining robotics? 

“I was in FLL for 4-5 years, and I noticed that high school has a higher level of robotics in the FIRST program, so I wanted to give it a try. I’ve always had an interest in building stuff and coding, so robotics gave me a new viewpoint in interests.” 

Q2: How would you describe your leadership role to someone not in robotics? 

“My role is to guide the Robot Code students to finish their tasks, like coding the entire robot and autonomous vision. I’ve been coding robots for a while now, so I have a lot of experience and understanding. Since I am graduating this year, I need to transmit my knowledge to younger students and make sure they are ready for next year when I am gone. I also communicate with other sub-teams, such as Fabrication and Design, to code an effective robot.” 

Q3: What prior coding experience did you have before becoming leadership? 

“I have been coding since third or fourth grade and have done website development, app development, and was in FLL. Once I got into robotics and the control systems, I learned a lot harder code and got to see my code physically work with the robot and not just see a screen.” 

Q4: What personal goals do you want to achieve this season?

“I really want to have a top two autonomous in Georgia. I want to improve our autonomous and avoid errors by learning from the past season. I also need to make sure my students have successfully learned my knowledge that I teach.” 

Q5: What sub-team goals do you want to achieve this season? 

“I want an equal distribution of programming effort where everyone has their own specialties, like vision and autonomous. With the entire team working together, we can get more programming done in time. I would like to have it where programming isn’t an issue with our robot performance during matches, but is rather one of our strong suits on the team.” 

Q6: How did Engineering lead influence the way you lead Robot Code? 

“Engineering lead was a very big change for me. I started off being someone who didn’t know much about the fabrication or electrical components and had to learn while being head. Becoming Robot Code lead, I now have more experience and knowledge in other fields with a better understanding of what you need to do. I think about how I can manage different types of people and how their timelines converge. Through Engineering Head, I realized how important sub-team communication is, which helps me understand what is possible and what is not to do with our robot.” 

Ayush Patwari's experience on our team shows how he progressed from coding our game to Engineering lead, and now Robot Code lead. His love for coding, mentoring young students, and improving team performance demonstrates his commitment to the team. We're eager to see his work as the year progresses.