Robotics Club

Last winter, my son was involved with the Robotics club at Huron High School. One day in the morning, he said he was excited about going to school. That was music to my ears! I asked him why and he said he had robotics after school to look forward to. In all the years he has gone to school, he has always looked for excuses to skip school and wished for a snow day almost every day during winter! Not only was he excited to go to school but he also spent all his winter holidays and mid winter break going to school and sometimes stayed there till 9:00PM to work on the robot. He never once complained that he did not have time to hang out with his friends. He was not the only one. There were some 20 - 30 other kids working on the robot. The kids had a teacher from Huron, mentors from the University of Michigan and the industry helping them and were a tremendously positive influence.

They participated in the FIRST robotics competition. FIRST which stands for “For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology” was founded by Dean Kamen who is an inventor and entrepreneur. He says on his website, USFIRST.org, that he wants "To create a world where science and technology are celebrated... where young people dream of becoming science and technology heroes".

They participated in four such games – one in St. Louis, one right here at Eastern Michigan University, one in Waterloo, Canada and the last final one at Atlanta. I had the opportunity to go the final game at Atlanta as a chaperone. The atmosphere was like that of a sports arena with parades, mascots, colored hair, balloons and whatnot. Here three radio controlled robots competed against three other robots to put red and blue rings on a structure with arms that seemed like a complex game of tic-tac-toe. There were a number of rules to the game and my son being interested in sports and being competitive was fascinated. The team also got extra points for putting the ring without using the controllers (autonomous) in the beginning and extra points if the robot climbed onto a ramp successfully at the end of the game before the buzzer rang.

The kids kept up their team spirits by exchanging buttons and other tokens and cheering loudly for their teams! This was analogous to playing a video game in 3D but where you were involved in building your own robot, controllers and writing the software for it - what a great concept!

For the award ceremony at the end of the game, we saw videos of some cool robots that are being developed. Two in particular that come to mind is the robot arm designed for US soldiers who lost their arm in Iraq and another impressive one called the “Cockroach” which moves on its spindly legs through all sorts of terrain, swims in water and then walks on its two hind legs inside an office building!

We also heard inspiring speeches from Dean Kamen himself, Chad Hurley, Co-founder of YouTube, to name a few. I believe the game changes from year to year. My son (and I) is already looking forward to the next year and curious to know what the next game is going to be. He claims their next robot is going to be awesome and that they already have ideas for it!

The Robotics club is supported mainly by sponsors and we parents are grateful to AVL, University of Michigan, Vitullo & Associates, Terumo, Pfizer, ABB, Alro Steel and Barclay-Chisa for supporting this wonderful after-school activity. We hope more sponsors support the robotics club this year. Then more kids will actually be able to go the games and see firsthand how their robot performs and cheer for their team.