About the Author

Avery W. Fiore entered the world of robotics competition aged 10. He has led teams and won numerous awards in FIRST® LEGO® League, VEX® IQ Competition, VEX® Robotics Competition and FIRST® Robotics Competition. In 2020, when the world came to a standstill due to COVID-19, he picked up CAD via a single Youtube video. With a bit of imagination, he designed a fully functioning robot that went on to win the Excellence Award at VEX Worlds 2021. Always passionate about sharing his love for robotics, he has invested over 1,000 hours coaching junior members. He wrote Macro Design: Preparing for the Game Drop to complement CAD classes he conducts for students. Avery was the FIRST® Robotics Competition Captain for Team 4817 at the Singapore American School from 2022 to 2024. He completed a 2 year stint in the Singapore Armed Forces and is currently enrolled in Electrical & Computer Engineering at Cornell University.

While serving as Robotics Captain for Team 4817, Avery recognized a major challenge facing many student-led robotics teams: there was a dearth of structured training material for developing new members. He believed that successful teams are built not only on talented leaders, but on cultivating knowledgeable and dedicated members throughout the entire program.

Beginning as a freshman, Avery started developing and conducting training programs for junior students. This extended beyond FRC into middle school VEX IQ Challenge (VIQC) teams, where he focused on identifying and nurturing promising young robotics students. One 8th-grade team he mentored went on to win the Design Award — the second-highest judged award — at the 2021 VIQC World Championship.

Applying the same philosophy to FRC, Avery began compiling structured training resources while providing hands-on CAD and mechanical tutoring to both junior members and peers. Many of the robot examples, mechanisms, and references featured throughout this handbook and website originated from training exercises, prototype designs, and competition robots developed under his guidance.

Through this experience, he became a strong advocate for producing a complete CAD design immediately following Kickoff. He found that teams capable of rapidly transitioning from strategy discussions into coordinated CAD development were significantly more organized, efficient, and prepared throughout the build season.

Over just 2 years under his leadership, Team 4817 evolved from a fully student-led team that struggled to consistently field a functional competition robot into a program capable of serving as an Alliance Captain at regional events.

It is Avery’s hope that other teams can use the same training methodologies, structured design approaches, and educational resources presented in this handbook to strengthen their programs, develop future student leaders, and accelerate their growth within the FIRST Robotics Competition community.