As I wrote about yesterday, we went to the Kettering FIRST competition this past Saturday. It was incredible fun. However, as much fun as the game was and as fascinating as the robots were, even more fun and interesting were the students behind the robots.

We had a chance to walk around the “pit” area, where students and their mentors would do final adjustments to their robots, and where they would keep the robots between rounds.

We spoke to a lot of students there in the pit, and found out just who these kids are and why they build these robots, how long it took and how they came to choose their particular robot design.

I spoke to Richard Pease of Grand Blanc’s team, the EngiNERDs. When asked why he got into robotics, he said, “I always messed with stuff when I was little … my dad kept telling me about Lego robotics but never really wanted to do it. And then my friend in one of my tech classes … was telling me about it. So I joined in … and it has been fun ever since.” So what does Richard want to do later in life? “Hopefully electrical engineering, maybe NASA …  might start my own business. ”

Tod LaBelle from Saginaw said, “I love engineering, it’s really fun. And thinking like that is what I want to do. And so this got me into it and made me think harder, it was just a lot of fun.” Kevin is also interested in electrical engineering.

“I’ve always been interested in engineering, my uncle was an engineer.” said Kevin Anderson of Okemos High School. Kevin is in his third year on team. “It’s just a really great experience being on the team, working together, getting whole different types of tastes in engineering all in the same club.”

As mentioned in yesterday’s article, every team seemed to gravitate toward either a turret or dumper style of robot. However, how they reached that point and the mechanics of each robot varied wildly. Here is the impressive part: These students only had 6 weeks to design and build their robot!

The EngiNERDs started out looking at ways to manipulate the ball. They did trials based on multiple designs before determining which worked the best for them. The turret can shoot from 5 feet out or just drop the ball right into the trailer if they are up-close. So how did they use their 6 weeks? The first 2 weeks was coming up with a design. The rest of the 4 weeks was constructing the mechanical skeleton of the robot. They had about 3 hours to put in about 90% of the electrical system.

Kimberly Marquette of Capac’s Metal & Soul team said that they wanted something similar to a conveyor belt in their robot for picking up the balls, but didn’t want to use an actual conveyor belt. So they ended up using paint rollers with Velcro on them that would spin at high speeds. So when the robot encountered balls it would pick them up, pull them to the top of the robot, and then be ready to use against their foes.

The Phoenix team from Saginaw had a very wide bottom for picking up a lot of balls at once. It uses a conveyor belt to pull the balls right to the top so that the dumper mechanism has what it needs to drop the balls onto their target’s trailer.

Okemos also looked at a lot of designs. At first they looked at trying to hold a lot of balls, but in the end went for a more compact design that was faster and had more scoring options available to them. Their robot was a sort of turret/dumper hybrid. While it has a turret for aiming, rather than shoot the balls out, it can instead dump the balls in the specified direction.

Every team had a different solution for what the game had to offer them. It was incredible to see all of these different robots and to hear how they were designed. The students clearly had a great time building them and then ultimately competing with them.

So why does Kettering University put on this event for the High School students?

Kettering University (formerly known as GMI) is a top engineering school that is ranked nationally #1 for Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering and #2 for Mechanical Engineering. So having a FIRST competition is a natural fit. Additionally, it makes high school students from Michigan and nearby locations aware of the programs that Kettering has to offer.

According to Bob Nichols, the founder of the FIRST games at Kettering and the Director of External Affairs, an incredible 20% of incoming classes at Kettering are FIRST alumni, with that figure going up every year. So clearly the students become aware and decide to attend. Mr. Nichols also points out that events like these can sometimes be what really gets the kids interested in engineering as they really realize what they can do. This program is so successful that for the second year in a row this kickoff has had 42 teams, which is a sell-out.

So how does Mr. Nichols describe the matches? “I’ve always compared this to NASCAR because they are in the pits working between matches. It is just like a NASCAR race, because you get a break, go back to the pits, work on your robot, get ready for the next match.

So how do they put this all together, “We have an extremely loyal volunteer committee. I don’t do this all myself. There is no way in the world I could.” said Mr. Nichols. “I don’t want to take the credit because without them it wouldn’t go on out here.”

A great example of just how valuable these volunteers are is what they accomplished the Thursday before the event. Starting at 4:00pm they began to put together the game area, bleachers, and everything else needed for the event on Saturday. By 8:00pm everyone was able to leave because it was all done.

Between the students, the organizers, and volunteers it takes a lot to put together a FIRST competition. There is a lot of work that goes into those robots. There is a lot of work that goes into the creation of the event. There is a lot of work that goes into the setup and operation. All of this, however, leads to a fantastic competition that was as near perfection as you could hope for.

We want to thank everyone for being so welcoming and gracious with their time. Everyone was very helpful and more than willing to explain everything we needed to know about the competition. We couldn’t have asked for a better day or for better hosts.

To those that have never experienced a FIRST competition, I strongly recommend going. It will be impossible for you not to have fun.