FRC 3970 ROBOTICSAbout Us

At Duncan Dynamics, we strive to provide opportunities and firsthand experiences that allow our members to strengthen their skills in collaboration, project-planning, and time management. Our ultimate goal is to inspire the next and future generations to learn and develop skills that will help them gain opportunities to explore their potential in the world of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics). As a team that was been competing for 11 years, our core values are ambition for excellence, teamwork, and ethics. We aspire to set our team up for success every year.

Founded in 2011

Our FRC (FIRST® Robotics Competition) team, Duncan Dynamics, was founded in 2011 by our current head mentor Doug Urabe. He is the manufacturing CTE teacher for Duncan Polytechnical Highschool in Fresno California. Every year since its founding, Duncan Dynamics has inspired students of the community and prepared them for a career.

3970 ROBOTS

2023 Fortress

Fortress was built for 2023 Charged Up. It competed at 2 regionals, placing rank 4 in the Monterey Bay Regional. It won the Excellence in Engineering Award at the Central Valley Regional. The goal of this game was to pick up and place both a cube and a cone on different nodes (poles for cones and shelves for cubes). This was also the first year that we used a swerve drive train, allowing us to be more competitive.

2022 Mantis

2022's game required a robot to shoot a large tennis ball into a basket and climb a set of ascending bars. Mantis, dubbed for its praying-mantis-like appearance, competed at 2 regionals and the World Championship. Just barely losing at the San Francisco Regional, Mantis took home the Finalist Award. At the Central Valley Regional, we again ranked 4th, placing us on the 2nd seeded alliance. Although we lost and received the Finalist Award, we received a Wild Card, qualifying us for the World Championship. We also won the Quality Award at the Central Valley Regional.

2020 Scorpio

Scorpion was a short robot built for Infinite Recharge. It was able to pick small, squishy yellow balls off the floor and shoot them at a target using a flywheel shooting mechanism.

2019 Zippy

Built for Deep Space, Zippy competed at 1 regional, Central Valley. Its name came from a singular zip tie that solved our gearbox tensioning issue. Zippy was a cascading elevator robot with a large intaking mechanism to place and pick up discs and orange balls.

Cubert(OffSeason Robot)

Built for the 2023 game Charged Up, "CUBERT" picked cubes off the floor and placed them in all possible scoring locations. This robot only picked up cubes, hence the name Cubert. It had an overhand swing down intake and a flywheel shooting mechanism. With the fastest drive base we have made to date, Cubert was a scoring machine. This robot also served as a workshop for new members.

2018 Robot

Built for 2018 Power-Up, this robot competed at 2 regionals and the World Championship. It was a cascading elevator robot with an articulating intake. The intake mechanism rolled cubes (milk crates) in, essentially grabbing them. Using the elevator, we were able to place on any game scoring location: the 8ft tall scale or 1ft tall switch. We won at the Sacramento Regional and were able to compete in Houston, Texas for the World Championship that year.