Being myself, I tend to be involved with the nerdier of extra curricular activities. Marching band, concert band, jazz band, pit band, every type of band, newspaper, and of course robotics.
The FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition is an annual competition for high schools around the country, and the world. Every year, a new game is developed, then revealed in an internet broadcast known as the “kickoff.” For the next six weeks, teams try to plan, design, and build a robot to compete in the game. When this build season is up, the robots are packed up and shipped off until the regional, where the teams uncrate their robot and compete against teams in their area. If they do well, they proceed to the national competition in Atlanta, Georgia.
Robotics has been on my mind a lot lately because this Thursday, Friday, and Saturday is the UTC Connecticut Regional at the Hartford Civic Center. It’s exciting…and terrifying. I logged around 110 hours in the six week building season. All that effort, all those long nights spent searching for the right drill bit or sanding again and again and again, they are all about this one weekend. If we do well, it’s a feeling of pride and satisfaction. If not, it’s bitter disappointment and a struggle to keep a brave face.
Robotics gets a bad rap from a lot of people who don’t know what they’re talking about. After all, building robots and being a fan of futuristic ideas has always been a characteristic of the stereotypical nerd or geek. However, this competition is so much more.
To put it in the words of Dave Lavery, NASA executive for solar system exploration, in his speech at the 2007 Kickoff,
“Over the course of the next six weeks you'll spend 4.2 million brain hours taking apart the problem we are going to give you. 4.2 million brain hours having fun, being passionate, thinking about what you want to do, having a great experience, focusing on something important. 4.2 million hours of brain power. Changing the culture of the United States. Changing the culture of the world. 4.2 million hours of brain power, doing something that has meaning. 4.2 million hours of brain power, and not a single one will be wasted on an irrelevant question like what the hell is Paris Hilton doing right now.”
Needless to say, his words were met with overwhelming applause.
But really, he’s right. FIRST is so much more than geeks building robots. I look at what it’s done for me, and I can see it. Not only did it give me the chance to connect with a guy I liked and have since been dating for almost a year, but it gave me confidence. I can walk into a workshop and feel reasonably confident using the machines. Drills, saws, even simple things like Allen wrenches and screwdrivers. It may seem silly to have this intense pride about knowing these things, but where else would I get this? There are no machines at my house. I have no room in my schedule to take a woodshop class. I have confidence in an entirely new area that I wouldn’t have otherwise.
It also makes talking to people a lot easier. These games the robots compete in aren’t individual. You’re on a team (called an alliance) of three robots, competing against another alliance of three. In the minutes before your match starts, you and your alliance partners have to be able to express clearly your strategies for the game, so everyone can be on the same page and the alliance can really work together as a team. This need for interaction can break even the shyest person out of their shell. Even when you’re building the robot in the beginning, a lot of times if you want to help you have to speak out and say so. Robotics pushes you to learn how to make yourself heard. This skill is important everywhere in life.
As a bonus, the people at the competitions are great. Obviously, robotics is not a club people join to try and raise their social status, so all the people at competitions are genuine, open-minded, and as a whole a great deal of fun to be around. In between matches there is dancing, trading team buttons (I have about forty from last year), and just making friends. Even through scoping out the competition, talking to other teams is sure to lead to an interesting conversation. Last year, a girl from the Uberbots even made me a pair of earrings, just because we’d talked and I mentioned how much I liked hers. FIRST runs on something called “gracious professionalism.” This idea of keeping malice and rudeness out of the competition has resulted in an almost totally friendly setting. The only enemy is the disappointment of loss.
There are four people on the robotics drive team. The driver handles the joystick that moves the robot around on the field. The switch operator handles the switches that, this year, raise or lower the arm and open or close the claw. The robocoach controls the robot with four commands during a fifteen second semi-autonomous mode at the beginning of the match. The coach communicates with all three team members and watches the field to give commands that keep everyone on the same page.
This year, the drive team was going to be Dave Van Fleet as driver, Mitch as switch operator, Andrew Frederickson as robocoach, and Tom Cosgrove as coach, but the SATs got moved to the day of the competition because of a snow day so now Dave can’t go. Mr. Cormier, the lead mentor of the team, moved Tom up to driver, and now the position of coach is open.
He says the spot is down to Tim Wilson, John Martin, and me. We’ll “try out” one last time in the practice rounds before the competition Thursday morning. I’m terrified. I want to be on the drive team so much. I’m just afraid that I’ll make a mistake and cost us the competition.
Tom was going to be the perfect coach. He’s compatible with…well, everybody, he sees everything and has an amazing reaction time, he knows the game, and he posses the incredible ability to stay calm under any circumstances. He would have been perfect.
I don’t have any of that, except maybe the ability to get along with people and the hours I put in. Tim knows the game well and is a senior, but he doesn’t get along with Mitch, he gets angry easily, and he didn’t put in that many hours. John knows the game and put in the hours, but he doesn’t get along with the rest of the team that well and doesn’t vocalize his ideas that clearly. When you have three seconds to get your point across, that becomes important. I don’t know what Mr. Cormier is going to do.
Ideally, I would make the drive team and somehow find inside me the ability to be the perfect coach. I’d coordinate hand signals with Andy across the field, keep Mitch and Tom in line, and help our alliance to victory. We’d place in the top eight for the qualifying rounds, get to pick out two alliance partners for the final, and go on to win the competition.
I’m afraid to hope that much though, because if it doesn’t (and it probably won’t) the feeling of disappointment will be too heartbreaking. It’s easier to aim low and take everything positive as a mildly pleasant surprise.
Every year, probably forty people join Team Max 1071, Wolcott High School’s FIRST robotics team. Maybe fifteen or twenty people end up at the competition. What some may call the “nerd elite,” the are the people who pour their heart into a competition that is encourage strong minds and strong morals, as apposed to just physical strength like most competitions do. I’m proud to be one of them. FIRST robotics is one group, no matter it’s nerdiness, that I will never be ashamed to say I am a part of. It’s not just a competition. It’s a way of looking at life that we will carry into the future, a dream of a world where people can get along through gracious professionalism and join their minds together to think through the planet’s problems. It’s excitement and determination and joy, but it’s also hope.
If that is nerdy, I don’t want to be cool.
--Iona
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