More Than Robots Found At Denver Robotics Competition

Don Bossi, president of FIRST, speaks with robotics competitors after a match.

Kids take math and science classes for 12 years in school, Don Bossi says.  

Bossi, president of FIRST – For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology – is changing the questions being asked of youth. FIRST Robotics Competitions ask kids across the globe to apply their math and science skills to solve problems, and learn other soft skills including marketing, writing and teamwork. At the 2015 regional competition in Denver in March, 51 teams of high school students competed to advance to the national championship that will take place in St. Louis in April. 

“What’s exciting to me is that FIRST has grown tremendously in the last 26 years,” Bossi says. “We have engineering and robotics programs in 80 countries. But the thing is, only 20 percent of kids have access. Kids in rural areas, in underserved schools or places don’t have access to these programs. That’s what we’re trying to figure out now, is how to make FIRST more scalable.”

Globally, 400,000 kids participate in FIRST programs. Even for kids who are especially talented at the math and engineering aspects of robotics, participating in competitions helps them build other skills that maybe they don’t have, Bossi says.

Competitors cheer on teammates at the 2015 Colorado regional FIRST Robotics Competition.

“I see there as being two kinds of kids who come into these programs,” he says. “There are the ones who know that they’re interested in engineering and are participating because it helps them progress with their skills and get better internships as they move on to college and careers. Then, there are the kids who are not really interested in engineering and robotics. FIRST gives them a place to flourish. They build team working skills, presentation skills, and they grow to become well-rounded.”

Bossi asked participants at the Colorado regional competition to help spread the word and to provide feedback to their mentors and coaches about what tactics are working, and where improvements can be made. 

Mentors for teams, as well as judges, administrators, planners and organizers, all volunteer their time.  

“Last year we counted 10 million hours of volunteer time,” Bossi says. “That’s the equivalent of 4,200 full time staff.”

Chris Williams and team members stand around their robot to debrief after a match.

Judges and mentors are drawn in by their own kids, in many cases. Chris Williams, a research engineer for tile and stone distribution company CAPCO, says he originally began participating in robotics competitions with his son. Now Williams mentors team number 4944, which ran into several problems with their robot at the Colorado competition.

“We haven’t run into anything that was preventable,” he said. “This moveable arm here has a pin that keeps it in place and it broke. We didn’t have a backup piece or any time to go get a replacement part. We had to improvise and it ended up falling out in the middle of the last match.”

Problem solving on short notice is a big part of the competition, says Sara Binder, a senior from St. Mary’s Academy in Denver, an all-girls school. 

“The alliances are unpredictable,” Binder says. “They’re randomly generated and match teams with other teams for some competitions. You have to figure out how to work with the style of the other team’s robot on really short notice.”
Binder and her teammate, Morgan Wagner, were there for the inception of the all-girls robotics team at St. Mary’s.

Team 5493 from St. Mary’s Academy in Denver wheels their robot to the arena for a match.

“We started with six girls last year,” Wagner says. “We raised $14,000 and built two robots.”  

Wagner, also a senior, is headed to Carnegie Mellon University in fall 2015 to work toward a degree in engineering and robotics. For kids who aren’t sure if they want to get into robotics or engineering, Wagner says to just try it anyway. 

“A lot of girls on our team aren’t really that into robots,” she says. “It’s an opportunity to be creative, learn about management, write grants, learn about electronics, we have to do a lot of different things. And it’s important that we make our team diverse.”

You can find more pictures from the event on our Facebook page. 

By April Nowicki