Who Are We?
Founded in 2013 in the back of a dusty storage room, we are FIRST Robotics team 4472 SuperNOVA based out of Prince William County, VA. We give industry level STEM opportunities to students from all backgrounds. Every year, we send kids to highly selective colleges and job placements. Our program makes future engineers, scientists, and leaders—one season at a time.
Why FIRST?
FIRST Robotics (FRC) is the highest level of competitive robotics out there for high schoolers. Our robots weigh 100+ lbs and compete on a field the size of a basketball court. Our students use equipment including a table saw, drill press, and CNC. Students wire and solder every connection on the robot. Then our programmers give it eyes and a brain. The best part? We do it all in 6 weeks, starting in January.
Meet Andromeda
Our robot for the 2026 game, Rebuilt. Featuring an auto-aiming turret that could shoot on the move, we had a highly successful season. We took home 3 awards:
• Innovation in Control — for our excellence in controls engineering
• Industrial Design — for our build quality
• Creativity Award — for how we sourced our turret bearings. This was our first ever award at the District Championship!
Want to know more? Take a tour of our robot's CAD, code repository, and match videos!
Subteams
Everyone had something they're good at. On SuperNOVA, we separate our members into subteams, so they can specialize in what interests them. Of course, that doesn't limit you from exploring anything you're interested in!
Do you love tinkering with power tools? Does designing complex mechanisms in CAD sound like a fun challenge? We'll teach you how to use heavy machinery like the CNC, drill press, and table saw. You'll also learn how to use OnShape and Fusion 360. AI can't replace a mechanical engineer!
Does soldering and designing circuits sound like your version of a fun time? Does trying to wire a turret that spins 360 degrees sound fun to you? Electrical tackles all those challenges and more, setting you up with hands-on preparation in electrical engineering. The project pictured is a button board electrical designed for our drivers a few years ago!
One of FIRST's selling points is its brief autonomous period and heavy emphasis on industrial automation. See the QR-code-like box pictured? That's an "Apriltag"—we use it to tell the robot exactly where it is, and it uses that information to make decisions like where it should be pointing the turret to. If you think that's neat, programming is your place!
Big robots come with big price tags. We operate like a small business with similar costs, so it's up to our students to fund raise the money we need to compete. Our ideal operating budget? Short of 50k a year. If raising money and creating promotional materials is your thing, business is for you.
Are you interested in statistics, modeling, and machine learning? Our data science team uses models and data to make predictions that inform our competition decisions. If you're an Excel wizard, or are interested in becoming one, and want to learn about analyzing data in any way possible, our data science team is always looking for ideas!