This Thursday, Texas Instruments invited all of the “house teams” in the area that are mentored by TI employees to come visit their Richardson wafer fabrication site, which manufactures billions of dollars of electronics chips every year. It was awesome to see both how electronics are made (which make up most robots), as well as the fact that almost every part of the wafer manufacturing process is controlled by robots. A typical “fab” has hundreds of tools that create electronic circuits using things like chemicals, gases, water, laser light, polishers, etc. Robotic systems deliver the wafers of electronic chips from tool to tool, and the tools themselves are basically robots that move wafers in and out of themselves and automatically control everything via sophisticated recipes. Humans just have to intervene to fix the tools when they break 🙂
Additionally, as shown in the title image, we were fortunate to be able to talk to TI leadership, including the President of Ed Tech and robotics programs sponsor Peter Balyta about the impact of FIRST in the DFW area. We look forward to continuing to grow our partnership with both TI and other FRC teams in the area.