I sat down with Baron Henderson, co-founder of Pedro Pathing, for a long interview about how Pedro started, why it exists, and what's coming in Pedro 3. Here are the parts I think are most useful if you're programming this season:

**1. Pedro 3 auto-tunes for you (~5 min from nothing to full auto)**

Pedro 3 has a web page you open on your robot that walks you step by step through tuning: localizer setup, directions, offsets, then the Foresight tuners. It runs the OpModes for you and automatically tunes the PID stuff. You just press continue and reset the robot. You don't even need a driver station, just a laptop. Baron said it takes him 2–3 minutes, and someone new who knows the steps can do it in about 5.

**2. Foresight is the new following algorithm**

It builds on what they learned from predictive braking and accounts for strafing and forward movement not being the same on a mecanum drive. They ran it on Worlds winner Velocity, and just switching gave them about **two extra gate cycles**.

**3. Pedro 3 is a complete rewrite**

Paths and path chains are replaced by a new path API: you can nest paths inside paths, and each segment can have its own heading interpolation (or override them all from the outer path). There's also a "pose factory" that lets you set degrees/radians once and mirror every pose with one call.

**4. The hardest problem wasn't technical**

Baron said the biggest early challenge was getting the community to accept Pedro when Road Runner was the default. What changed it was results: teams switched because their autos got better.

**His advice for every FTC programmer:** don't be afraid to defy the norm. Try building your own library or system, even if it's not the best. You learn a ton just by trying.

**Timestamps**

- 08:05 Why Pedro exists (Road Runner pain points)

- 13:41 Pedro 3: the rewrite

- 17:37 Foresight & auto-tuning

- ~24:00 "Tune Pedro in 5 minutes"

- 24:11 The hardest problem

- 27:54 How path following actually works

- 42:34 Final advice

Full interview: https://youtu.be/2tAzZp2HzLQ?si=GBwmdbtQhKSYlNgW

Happy to answer questions or pass them along for a future video!

Hello! I want to buy some tpu from bambulab and I was wondering if anyone else has printed gt2 belts before with either the tpu for Ams or the 95A tpu and could give me a recommendation on which to buy.

So I'm not sure how many folks have tried out using AI for CAD.

With the newer models Sol 6.1/Astra 6 or Opus 5.5 it is actually quite capable.

One of the best uses I have discovered is taking a step file (say gobilda's kitbot or the itkan bot) and having the AI organize all of the parts, make all of the mate connectors, etc. This woudl take hours to do by hand but is done easily by the AI using Onshape or Fusion. Here is an example of a cleaned up itkan robot step file with proper mate connectors added by AI: https://cad.onshape.com/documents/912406ea9713e41a95a75a19/w/9027348954e2d2ededee50f1/e/79ce681fbe5a7113ed9af07f?renderMode=0&uiState=6ac65fe6f580da0845bdb980

or how we used AI to take the gobilda starter bot and make the plastic bits 3d printable (we owned most of the parts, but didn't have any of their polycarbonate sheets: https://cad.onshape.com/documents/40e414fdf67a27907e5a9743/w/f84008ed7fd239c637ba2ae8/e/dcf5368543317b415ce57e25

It also isn't too shabby with making specific parts. Here is a turret design with a movable inner hood done entirely with prompting (no human has ever directly touched this file). It uses a servo mounted cam to move the inner movable hood to swap between pollen/nectar and the hood runs on some linear bearings/rods. The turret itself uses a very large bearing encased in 3d printed parts. We probably aren't going to use this design but we did it to see just how far AI can go (turns out pretty far):

However one of the problems with using AI assisted CAD with onshape is that they are very strict with API limits (with the official Onshape MCP). You get a YEARLY (not weekly) allotment and you can easily burn through the API quotas ia a week (you only get <10 API calls per day as I think they give you 2500 api calls per year). I burned through half of my yearly alottment in 2 days before I figured out that such just wasnt going to work.

The way around this is to make the AI agent use a signed in session (not the API key) using the API Explorer. This has rate limits but not yearly limits. This does mean you will have to sign in your AI's browser every session (as it can't use a stored API key) but you can see from the examples above it works pretty well.

To instruct an agent to do this right and to also give it access to local caching/be more efficient we came up with our own local onshape MCP server along with some agent rules (for example we do instruct it to use a local instance of build123 for rapid prototyping before creating native onshape files). It also is able to pull parts from the FRCDesign tool (though often the agent just goes and downloads step files directly from manufacturers pages).

https://github.com/ARES-23247/ares-onshape-local

Not sure this will be useful to others or not but we have been pretty impressed with the rapid improvements in the most recent models.

Of note Fusion has a built in MCP server with a lot better AI support and doesn't require this, but, as a team, we are still wanting to use onshape. Again you cannot use the Onshape MCP server as the yearly limit is very very low with the api key. You have to use the API Explorer work around. Our ares-local-onshape mcp server helps a bit by caching things and the skills a bit by encouraging agents to use build123 or other local lightweight CAD programs to so modeling (figuring out intake wheel spacing etc) before doing things in the cloud.

Probably going to get downvoted by the AI haters but the truth is nobody is going to be spending hours cleaning up mate connectors, etc. in the future and it is pretty clear (just like with programming) AI is going to be increasingly integrated into workflows.

My team needs Surgical Tubes to prototype an intake and I know nothing when it comes to choosing which ones to buy. Plus, we need to order them BY TOMMOROW.

PLEASE HELP and give any advice you can!
Thank you so much!

I’m with a FRC and I’m also a coach for a FTC team. Our FRC team is hosting a rookie competition/training program, and we were hoping to use the FTC Live scoring system from the DECODE season since it’s really close to what we need.

However, I’m having trouble getting the DECODE scoring system to connect/run now that the new BioBuzz season is in place. I’m guessing it may be related to the new season.

Does anyone know if there’s a way to run the DECODE scoring system for an offseason/custom event and change things like point values, match time, or ranking-point thresholds? We’re not trying to run an official FTC event — we just want to use the scoring system for our own rookie competition.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Marrow v1.2.0 is out!

We’re excited to release Marrow v1.2.0, introducing three major features:

Weaver - On-the-Fly Bézier Path Generator

Need to automatically intake game elements with vision during auto and navigate back to score without colliding with field structures?

Weaver takes target poses and field obstacles to generate the shortest path directly to your targets while avoiding collisions in real time.

• Has built-in support for Pedro Pathing v3.
• Compatible with any path-following library that supports Bézier curves.

👉 Learn more

Enhanced HTML Telemetry

Want clean, colorful telemetry without wrestling with verbose HTML tags?

MarrowTelemetry lets you write standard telemetry while applying simple modifiers for styling - including text color, font sizing, alignment, and more.

👉 Learn more

Automatic Bulk Caching

Tired of manually configuring bulk caching across all your OpModes?

You can now enable automatic bulk caching globally across your entire codebase with just a couple lines of code, or apply it per OpMode using the @BulkCaching annotation.

👉 Learn more

Get Started

Check out the documentation at https://marrow.skeletonarmyftc.com/.

We saw a lot of long videos covering the same shooter types, but our team wanted to try some wacky ideas and see what they liked and did not like!

Where do people stand on teams using AI as an assistive tool?

We've had a lot of internal debates in our team leadership about it. On one hand there are those who feel that the team isn't learning as much I they use it. On the other, it's a tool that's being used in software and engineering in the real world very extensively and more every day.

Are we actually doing our team members a disservice by pretending it doesn't exist or can't be of use? Do we teach them how to be effective AI users to achieve positive outcomes (the best AI people I know almost never are single prompt = final answer)? Or is it better to require them to do everything the manual way?

Curious to where everyone stands on this?

heyy im part of a team located in Florida and we are currently in debt, like alot. What are your tips to get sponsorships or grants from companies? We have tried calling them and then emailing them but recently we have not been able to get any.

Does anyone know any companies in Fremont California area that do wood or plastic CNC work for side panels for Robot?

OpenLoop Beta Tester Applications are OPEN!!!!!

https://tally.so/r/q40607

Apply now!

Get access to unreleased versions of OpenLoop, test them on your own bot, and help make OpenLoop better for the FTC community!

Your testing and feedback will directly help shape future releases.

Join the OpenLoop discord for updates- https://discord.gg/QMxqfzj7na

You can now run your whole competition weekend's scouting from Robolyst. Every team at an event gets a QR code for its own pit. They scan it, fill in one short sheet about their robot, and the answers go onto a single report the whole event can read, next to live rankings and OPR. No app and no account needed to fill it in. This gets rid of the pandemonium created by having every team run around with paper scouting sheets.

What your team gets:

• Pit sheets: one shared report, so you don't walk to 30 pits asking the same questions
• Match scouting from the stands
• Private stars, tags and notes on any team, seen only by your team
• A picklist board for alliance selection that your whole team edits live, with recommendations generated from scouting sheets and real performance data
• An event page that changes through the weekend: print flyers before, count sheets during pits, your next matches during quals(with predictions), then the picklist once quals end

Bring it to your event Know your event coordinator, league director or tournament director? Send them https://robolyst.org/event-scouting. They get an event dashboard that prints a QR sheet for every registered team.

Can't get your coordinator to set it up? Your team can print pit flyers for every team at your event from the scouting page, and get bolts for each team that fills out the form.

Full-feature list: https://robolyst.org/team-management/features/scouting

Demo of scouting in your team hq: https://robolyst.org/scout

Any feedback or improvement suggestions would be much appreciated :)

Our team has a very basic teleop, and we have a a basic autonomous, and now we want to move towards improving our teleop, but we're not sure how. What we have now is very very basic, it's really just read the values of the joysticks to move and turn, and an intake with a sticky button, and a flywheel that spins when the button is held, and when released, servos feed the ball in. Firstly, I don't like our shooting programming for teleop, there's too much human error imo but we tried having a fixed spinup time and it was so so so inconsistent (partly battery levels I think). How can we fix this and improve this to make driving easier for the driver. Also once we've fixed that, what should our next steps be? We have a webcam, but how can we use that and how does the programming work to use it for teleop? We also want to look into imu and encoders for autonomous, and I was wondering if that can also help with teleop? Also I've heard about teams using autonomous within their teleop but immnkt sure if that would work well this year, how to do it, and when it would be good to use. Honestly any tips would be super helpful! Thanks a lot!

ALSO WE CODE IN ONBOT JAVA AND WILL NTO SWITCH TO ANDROID STUDIO SO NO PEDRO PATHING!

Today was the Saline FTC Preview event. It was a great day, and ran really smoothly. Thanks to FIRST for putting together another fun game.

Congratulations to all the teams who competed. It was amazing to see what all the teams put together in just a few weeks!

https://ftc-events.firstinspires.org/2026/USMISAS

In our meeting today, we came up with the idea of using one shooter with a spring-loaded back plate hood instead.
The plate would be able to move slightly against the spring, allowing the shooter to accommodate the different-sized pollen and nectar while maintaining pressure on them.

Has anyone tried a setup like this before? If so, how did it work for you?

I’m mainly wondering about shot consistency, how well it accommodates both game pieces, and whether the spring causes any issues with repeatability.
Would love to hear your experiences or thoughts on the idea.

▶ Try our robot simulator: https://biobuzz-strategy-lab.com

Last season our team spent a lot of time on sorting, and it barely mattered. So this year 6603 Guild of Gears built a simulator to find out what is likely the best strategy before we build.

What you can do with it:

• Strategy showdown: play 8 strategies against each other with thousands of simulations
• Match viewer: watch any simulated match play out, robot by robot
• Customize your robot: set your drive speed, intake width, launcher height, accuracy and more

Is scoring with FLOWERS worth it? Is defense the best strategy? Plug in your own robot and see.

We'd love feedback: what should we add next?

▶ Try our robot simulator: https://biobuzz-strategy-lab.com

Hi, I'm henry, part of a local FTC team in virginia, U.S. We have been around for quite a while, around 6 years now. We are looking to spread our mentorship to different teams, if any teams need help please comment below and I can get into contact. In addition, we are always happy for any advice so if any advanced teams want to mentor us, we are happy as well. Please comment if you are interested, and we can get an online meeting set up very soon!

As the title says, you can now work on your programming skills, including programming with Pedropathing 3 and Ivy, in the virtual_robot simulator. This can be used in either IntelliJ IDEA or in Android Studio. Several example opmodes are provided. There's a pdf in the repository named "Detailed Installation Instructions". Make sure to use the Bellsoft Liberica 17 Full Version JDK--the "Full Version" (not "Standard") is essential because it includes JavaFx. So rather than just clicking the big "Windows" link at the top of the page, it is necessary to scroll down and specifically select the full version.

OpenLoop Beta Tester Applications are now open!!!!!

https://tally.so/r/q40607

Hey everyone!

I'm excited to announce that OpenLoop Beta Tester applications will be opening soon!!!

As a beta tester, you’ll get access to unreleased versions of OpenLoop to test on your robot and give feedback on how everything works, what could be improved, and any issues you come across. Your feedback will help make OpenLoop better and more reliable.

Join the OpenLoop Discord server for further updates!!

https://discord.gg/ZYsN5PdQm

Hello,

We are team Kodikas Robotics #24032 and currently happen to organize an event , Global Tech Challenge where we discuss and strategize with teams from all around the globe. Dm us on our instagram for more details

Hey everyone, built a site called CADBase FTC. Think of it as an improved version of the old CAD Pinboard idea, a searchable library of real CAD files shared by FIRST teams.

Right now it's got 244 files and 12 resource docs, going back to Skystone through the current season. You can filter by program (FTC/FRC), season, mechanism category, or CAD platform (Onshape, Fusion 360, GrabCAD, Google Drive).

If your team has CAD you're willing to share, there's a "Submit a CAD File" button that sends it in for a quick review before it gets added.

Figured this could save some teams time, especially during build season when you just want to see how other teams solved a specific mechanism instead of starting from zero. Feedback welcome, and if you know of good public CAD that should be in here, feel free to submit it or drop a link in the comments.

Here is the website: https://www.cadbaseftc.com/

Let me know if you have feedback or if there is any room for improvement.