About Team 3132

FIRST Team 3132, The Thunder Down Under, is a FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) team in Sydney, Australia, currently based at Macquarie University in the North of Sydney. Our team's goal is advancing the public recognition of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths) related fields.

"Innovate. Improve. Inspire the World." In every aspect of our work, we strive to embody our team motto, constantly looking for innovative and exciting projects that spread the word of FIRST.

Working towards this goal are nearly sixty students and mentors from all over Sydney, putting in countless hours every week to build robots, teach and excite young children about robotics and spreading the word of FIRST. Our students come from over 20 high schools in the Greater Sydney Area, such as Epping Boys High School, Hornsby Girls High School and Barker College.

Our team is structured into two branches, Strategy and Technology, which both develop and produce different elements to contribute to our greater goal of inspiring young people to consider careers in the STEM fields.

Team 3132, The Thunder Down Under, the first FRC team within Asia-Pacific was founded by the Heimlich family in 2009. Since then our team has recruited incredibly passionate, determined and focused students from the greater Sydney region coming over 80km away from our HQ at Macquarie University. We are all committed to our team, The FIRST organisation, and our mission, which is to embody our motto -- "Innovate. Improve. Inspire the World." -- through our community outreach like showcasing at TEDxMacquarie University & many other events at which we practice Gracious Professionalism, developing effective relationships our mentors, students, partners and sponsors.

Since 2009 our team has participated at the Granite State Regional in 2010, where we made it to the World Championships, then in Atlanta, and in 2011 we participated in the Hawaii Regional, again making it to the World Championships, this time in St Louis. 2012 saw Team 3132 compete at the Orlando Regional, and we were lucky enough to compete at St Louis again. We returned to Hawaii in 2013, and once again, were lucky enough to compete at St Louis.

The FIRST® Robotics Competition is an international high school robotics competition organized by FIRST®. As of early 2012, 2,343 high school teams of 58,575 students from Australia, Brazil, Canada, The Netherlands, Israel, the United States, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Dominican Republic and others compete to build robots weighing up to 120 pounds (54.5 kg) that can complete a challenge that changes every year. Teams are given a standard set of parts with the game details at the beginning of January and are given six weeks to construct a competitive robot, that can operate autonomously as well as when guided by wireless controls, to accomplish the game’s tasks. For comprehensive information please visit FIRST® Official site.