About Us

Who We Are

Team 4096, Ctrl-Z, is a growing FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) team from Champaign County in Illinois. Founded in 2011 by passionate students, parent and college mentors. Our 34 students come from 9 different highschools in Champaign, Urbana, and the surrounding area, making up a unique and diverse group of 8th through 12th graders. Today, the team operates in downtown Champaign as part of CS+X, a local maker space initiative in downtown Champaign, Illinois!

What We Do

Each year FRC releases a new challenge to be completed in 6 weeks. Ctrl-Z prototypes, CADs, designs, builds, wires, and programs a robot to compete in each year’s game. For these 6 weeks, members of the team dedicate countless hours to the program in order to be ready for the competitions. The game is unique each year and has different goals from previous years, requiring students to be able to work quickly and effectively over these 6 weeks in order to do build the most competitive robot we can.

Student-Run Team

While on this student-run team, students obtain valuable life skills and knowledge to assist them in pursuing post-secondary education, usually in the science and technology fields. The students are guided, when necessary, by our talented group of mentors, with experience in these fields, who are able to help the students learn more than they would be able to on their own. Ctrl-Z is very thankful to our many mentors and parents who spend countless hours with these students, as well as growing with them as a team.

Outreach

The team looks forward to reaching out to the community to encourage STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) and robotics education across the area. We have made many presentations to elementary, middle, and high schools, as well as 4-H Clubs. We also have mentored FLL (FIRST LEGO League) teams, FTC teams and help to put on the local FLL Qualifier Tournament, State Tournament, and FTC League Meets each year. We even run a summer camp for 3rd to 8th graders!

Want to learn more about us? Please contact us!