Four high school teams spend six weeks building a robot from scratch for the 2008 FIRST Robotics competition, with no instructions beyond a shared deadline. Miss Daisy, out of Wissahickon High School in Ambler, Pennsylvania, is the most experienced squad in the film, while Rambotics, an all-boys team from Ridge View Academy in Watkins, Colorado, is built entirely of students at a correctional facility trying to prove something to their community. Ratchet Rockers, a combined team from Holt and Timberland High Schools in Wentzville, Missouri, are competing for the fourth year running, and the RoboDoves, from Western High School in Baltimore, are an all-girls team from an all-girls school. The film follows each group through design decisions, wiring problems, and the scramble before their robots have to work on demand at competition. It stays close to the students themselves rather than the mechanics of the sport, tracking what a shared, high-stakes technical deadline does to teenagers from very different circumstances.