What do you get when you combine life-size robots, giant rubber
balls, alliances vying for victory and a bunch of rowdy teenagers?
Mayhem, of course.
You also get a FIRST Robotics competition that took place recently
at Glacier Peak High School in Snohomish, Wash. “On the Whiteboard”
Editor Pamela Woon was there to catch all of the robot ruckus, shown in
the above video.
FIRST is a national nonprofit that encourages high school students
to grow their science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) know-how
by trying their hand at building robots. Approximately 20 Microsoft
employees volunteer as mentors for local teams.
Each team has six weeks to construct machines to perform a
specific task, which changes every year. This year, they built 120-pound
robots that could: pick up, pass and shoot a 2-foot exercise ball over a
truss and into a goal 8-feet high.
Part basketball game, part rock concert and a little bit NASCAR,
this is probably the opposite of what comes to mind when you think
“computer geek.” These kids are pumped. They’re proud. Yet, they’re
getting a head start in engineering and computer science.
Bruce Wittenmyer
In the “pit” team xbot members race to fix their robot before the competition.
“The competitions have some of the most energy of anywhere I’ve
been,” says Aaron Schmitz, a mechanical engineer working at Microsoft on
Xbox sensors in the Devices and Studios Group. “The kids are so excited
about watching their robots compete, which is funny. I’m not used to
watching kids getting excited about education.”
Schmitz himself is only 20. A Minnesota native, he grew up
building robots for FIRST competitions. Today, he not only works at
Microsoft, he’s also a mentor for team xbot, which pulls students from South Seattle’s Franklin High School to compete in FIRST tournaments.
The students meet in Building 99 at Microsoft’s Redmond campus
Tuesday and Thursday nights, and Saturdays during the season, which runs
from January to April. Most carpool with mentors. Robot building during
the evening sessions is typically hashed out over dinner.
Schmitz, who also mentored a FIRST team in his hometown before
moving west, says this group is different from the one he worked with
before. Eighty percent of the students at Franklin qualify for a free or
reduced-price lunch.
“The students I worked with in Minnesota were looking for another
line item on their resume,” he explains. “Our xbot students are from a
low-income area of Seattle. We’re encouraging them to major in
engineering when they might not have otherwise gone to college.”
Schmitz graduated high school having already completed two years
of college credits. FIRST gave him the practical, hands-on engineering
experience essential to landing his job at Microsoft. He says watching
competitions, like the one at Glacier Peak, shines a whole new light on
what young engineers are really like. They’re loud. They’re fun. And
they can cheer with the best of ‘um.
Tom Blank, a hardware engineering manager at Microsoft Research
and another mentor for team xbot, agrees. “It would be like people
dancing at a chess match. How many times do you see that? That’s
absolutely part of the magic here. Not everyone is an athlete. Not
everyone gets to do that. Literally, the gear heads, the geeks, the
misfits have an outlet here.”
Bruce Wittenmyer
Two members of team xbot take their robot onto the game field.
While FIRST is about competition, it’s also about cooperation.
“Gracious professionalism” is the core value. Victory is based on the
performance of your robot, but also how you cooperate with other
alliance members and how much community outreach your team has done.
“We try to engineer the best learning experience,” Blank says. “We
have a mantra over here: Fail and fail fast.
Give it your best shot.
Try it. If it doesn’t work, retry with the knowledge that you’ve gained.
Keep iterating until you find a solution.”
Many of the students who join team xbot come with little or no
engineering or computer science experience. “They don’t know which end
of the soldering gun to hold,” Blank says. Many of them come because a
friend brings them along, or because dinner is provided.
Building the robots and participating in the competition helps
students understand the value behind science and math. It gives their
classwork meaning. It also gives them a head start. Blank says xbot alum
often go on to electronics labs in college and “smoke everyone else in
terms of the quality of their effort.”
Xbot mentor Troy Barnes says the program provides a way to reach
kids who would otherwise spend the evenings and weekends on their
phones. “Robotics is something active they can do.”
Bruce Wittenmyer
This year’s challenge: Shoot a 2-foot exercise ball over a truss and into an 8-foot high goal.
Barnes’ day job is a software design engineer in test for
Microsoft’s Operating Systems Group. His team ended up coming from
behind to win the Glacier Peak competition.
Initially, they placed 22nd out of 32 teams. Their robot had
racked up a number of fouls and penalties. But they formed an alliance
with a higher-ranked team and in cooperation, beat everyone else.
“It just goes to show, it’s not always about how well you do on
your individual robot, but also how well you collaborate with other
teams,” Barnes says. “It was exciting how it all worked out.”
His team advanced to the Pacific Northwest Regional Championship, held Thursday in Portland, Ore.
For Dan Rosenstein, FIRST is an extended part of his family. He’s a mentor for the Issaquah Robotics Society and a lead program manager in Microsoft’s Operating Systems Group.
The team is about the students and the mentor’s role is to guide
them, he says. Their bond is forged over countless shared meals and
robot building sessions.
Bruce Wittenmyer
Team xbot’s captain adjusts their robot’s catapult to correct a shooting error.
During the season, Rosenstein will often spend more dinners eating
with his team than he does his own family.
A trade-off, yes. But a
worthwhile investment. He hopes his daughters Ally, 5, and Haley, 2,
will participate in FIRST when they’re old enough to join a team of
their own.
Microsoft donates $17 an hour for his charitable mentoring time to Issaquah Robotics Society as part of its Corporate Citizenship program. “I have volunteered 350-plus hours this year, which becomes a considerable value-add to the team,” Rosenstein says.
Schmitz, too, is hooked. He notes that most people who build
robots or mentor students on teams like xbot stay involved for a long
time. He knows two former FIRST participants who are now married, and
they continue to help inspire the next generation of engineers.
“I will continue to mentor for the indefinite future,” he says. “There is no exit strategy.”
For information about how you can contribute, check out xbot robotics’ donation page. You can also learn how to get involved at FIRST’s Volunteer page.See this post on the original site------>
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