A Robot Competition Where Winning Isn’t Everything

By Mike Drummond

April_coverI’m sitting in the administration building at Myers Park High School in Charlotte, N.C. Just a few paces from me is the vice principal’s office. I used to spend a lot of time in vice principals’ offices. More time than I care to remember or admit.

I feel my palms grow sweaty. My heart begins to race. I glance at the exit.

Whoa, is that a panic attack coming on?

Just then Andy Douds, the school’s engineering teacher, approaches with a smile and hurries me out the door.

I fall into quick step with Douds. He’s all of 5’ 7ish, and he’s a brisk walker. I feel myself struggling to keep pace as we march across the quad. We’re en route to meet a half-dozen members of the Stangs, short for Mustangs, the school’s mascot.

The team is competing in the 19th annual FIRST or For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology challenge, the youth robotic competition founded by famed inventor Dean Kamen.

Kamen, vexed by what he saw as a society too infatuated with sports stars and celebrities at the expense of nurturing cerebral heroes, launched FIRST to generate young people’s interest and participation in science and technology.

“Your daughter,” he’s said to me more than once, “has a much better shot at being a rocket scientist than she ever does being a movie star.”

His mission seems to be working.

Since its humble beginnings in New Hampshire, FIRST has grown to an international event, with more than 45,000 kids taking part in various FIRST competitions. Teams of up to 10, not including adult mentors, build robots from kits – from small versions made of LEGOs to forklift-sized mechanical beasts.

This is the Stang’s rookie season – they’re among 278 first-time teams in this year’s event. As newcomers, they are easing their way into the competition through the FIRST Tech Challenge or FTC.

The FTC tier allows those who want to compete in FIRST, but who may lack the $6,500 or so it takes to pay for the bigger robot kits. At the time I met them, they had raised about $1,400, enough to cover the cost of a $1,000 kit for a suitcase sized robot or “sports model,” as well as incidentals such as travel.

Teams are responsible for designing, building and programming their robots to compete in an alliance format against other teams. The types of competitions change each year, but they typically involve hurling balls into some kind of receptacle – sort of the NBA meets Asimov. The robot kit, programmed using a variety of computer languages, is reusable from year-to-year.

Teams, including coaches, mentors and volunteers, are required to develop a strategy and build robots based on sound engineering principles. Awards are given for the competition as well as for community outreach, design and other real-world accomplishments.

Build Time

FIRST teams are allowed six weeks to construct their robots.

This is the calm before the storm for the Stangs, who hope to get their robot assembled and working in time for the regional competition at North Carolina A&T University in Greensboro. Should they prevail, they’ll move on to the international championship at Atlanta’s Georgia Dome, April 15-17.

Theirs is a deceptively simple-looking robot. Squat, square and constructed with Erector-set like girders, the device will roll on rubber wheels and shoot Wiffle balls.

Their robot’s launching mechanism borrows from the machines used at batting cages – spinning wheels set on either side of a launch chute. Balls are fed into the chute and propelled by the spinning wheels. The faster the wheels spin, the greater the velocity.

If all goes according to plan, their little robot will shoot more Wiffle balls with more accuracy than the competition.

The team is more focused on function than form, which means no trips to Radio Shack or hobby stores for LEDs or other flashy cosmetic ornaments.

“We’re really working with what we have,” says Marcelo Cordova, 17, the team’s de facto leader and spokesman. The team received its kit after Thanksgiving break. It was still in the construction phase by the time I met the Stangs in late January.

But getting the thing to work is not the team’s biggest concern. Marcelo notes that the hardest task the team has faced is lack of funds.

Indeed, FIRST is more than a robotic competition. It requires teams to master a variety of disciplines, including marketing or fundraising – something easier said than done for teens more interested in gears and algorithms than glad-handing for sponsorship dollars.

Cordova also wishes “FIRST had more outreach programs that would help first-year teams develop a program and timetable” for fund-raising and robot building. As it stands, the team is proceeding on a trial-by-error basis.

FIRST officials say the organization offers robust support through regional mentors and online forums.

A record number of teams are participating this year. This critical mass has generated a positive feedback loop in corporate America. FIRST officials say Fortune 500 companies such as Boeing, SAIC and Universal Laboratory Inc. have found the event has improved morale among its engineers who help FIRST teams.

“They see value of FIRST to promote innovation in their own organizations,” says Dennis Garrigan, who heads marketing for FIRST.

The event also has triggered no small amount of largesse from some big companies. FedEx, for example, ships winning robots from regional competitions to the championship and back, gratis.

This can come in handy for the larger robots, which can weigh upwards of 100 pounds or more. When all is said and done, some teams spend as much as $10,000 on their robots.

“We do restrict what you can put on them, and we have weight and volume restrictions,” says Bill Miller, director of the FIRST Robotics Competition. “You can’t buy, say, an articulated arm assembly from some place. And there is a dollar cap and you must provide a list of any additional materials you use.”

The Stangs team is composed of mostly juniors and seniors. They include Charles Suaris, John Merlie, Rakesh Kumar, Jeffry Prouty and Andrew Bowen.

The Stangs split the team into thirds – mechanical, programming and marketing. But all of them were pressed into service as marketers to solicit donations.

“We literally knocked on doors,” says Suaris, who concentrated on aviation companies. “And we had a lot of doors close in our face.”

It didn’t help that a team from a local rival school made it clear that the Stangs were not to approach its sponsors – a departure from FIRST’s main tenets of “gracious professionalism” and “coopertition,” that is, relentless competition, “but assisting and enabling others when you can.” FIRST offers awards for teams that demonstrate this type of generosity of spirit.

Holy Cows

While the Stangs are learning the ropes and dealing with growing pains, across the country in San Diego, it’s a different story with The Holy Cows.

The team from High Tech High is competing in the top-tier FIRST Robotics Competition or FRC for its fifth straight year. The veteran team is a well-oiled machine. Run like a business, it has student department heads each for engineering and marketing/finance, as well as managers for electrical, scouting, software programming, finance and outreach.

Its sponsors include BAE Systems, Qualcomm, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department and a local Ferrari car club, among others. Lack of money is not an issue. But that’s not to say the team doesn’t work hard for donations.

During the offseason, the team spreads awareness of the FIRST program by performing thousands of hours of community service and presenting at schools, companies and conventions. The off-season also means writing grants, recruiting new members and maintaining past seasons’ robots.

I spoke with Olivia Perry, 18, the team’s director of marketing and finance and head of PR. She’s in charge of submitting business plans, award submissions and keeping the books, among other tasks.

“We have a manager’s meeting every week to discuss the direction the team is going,” she says. “It’s a year-round team.

“It’s been an evolution,” she adds. “It started with five members and none were girls. Now we have 40 members and 30 percent are girls. It used to be all focused on engineering. Men and women have different skills. One of my jobs is to make sure everyone understands the entire process, not just the engineering.”

OK, so what’s up with the team’s name?

The team started as a Fistful of Motors in 2005. But this being an American-born competition, visuals, logos and branding are an important part of the experience.

“Fistful of Motors wasn’t something we could visualize, something we could pitch,” Perry says. “One day we were trying to think of new names. Someone walked in, saw Fistful of Motors and said, ‘Holy cow, that name sucks.’ That’s how we came up with The Holy Cows.”

The Holy Cows host an annual kick-off event called Team San Diego, a coalition of all the San Diego-area FIRST robotics teams, a swath that runs from Chula Vista to Riverside. The teams gather to test-drive their robots and do any necessary fine-tuning. The Holy Cows even allows rival teams to avail themselves to a sponsor’s machine shop, Blue Chip Machining & Fabrication.

“You never know who you’ll be up against,” Perry says. “You never know who your rivals are going to be.

“We exemplify what FIRST is all about,” she adds. “Keep your hearts and resources open.”

Editor’s note: This article appears in the April 2010 print edition.