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ROBO-INNOVATORS: THE NEXT GENERATION
Robots take the field in name of science
High school competitors build their own mechanical players
By Robert Weisman, Globe Staff March 24, 2006
The
geek olympics have come to town.
And if America faces a shortage of engineers and inventors, you'd never guess it
from the hundreds of tech-crazed high school students gathered in Boston
University's Agganis Arena yesterday to ready their robots for the FIRST
Robotics Competition opening today.
Forty-four high school teams, outfitted in safety goggles and brightly colored
T-shirts, were huddled in ''pits," drilling holes, tightening bolts, and putting
the finishing touches on the 5-foot-high robots they'd designed and built. Some
looked like shopping carts
with
circuit boards, others like elongated jukeboxes or giant gumball machines on
wheels.
High-tech luminaries like Steve Wozniak, the pony-tailed Apple Computer
cofounder and a judge at this weekend's contest, moved through the pits,
chatting with the next generation of innovators.
''Do we have a Dremel tool?" George Perna, a mentor from Textron Systems in
Wilmington, shouted at orange-clad members of the Burning Tigers team from
Brighton High School who were scrambling to replace a motor in their drive
mechanism with one that spun faster.
''I'm looking for a puncher," said Ismail Maye, a Brighton High sophomore
seeking to adjust a part used in a ball-lifting assembly.
The event, which is expected to draw thousands of spectators, is sponsored by
FIRST (For the Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), a
nonprofit organization started in 1989 by Dean Kamen, the New Hampshire-based
inventor of the Segway scooter. It's designed to get high school students jazzed
about math and science, and dozens of corporations sponsor teams, ponying up
$6,000 per school for kits, parts, tools, and registration fees.
Many companies
also dispatch
mentors to work with the teams and recruit future interns.
''Businesses recognize that we really need a change in American culture," said
Brookline technology entrepreneur Marc A. Hodosh, chairman of the Boston FIRST
event. ''This country celebrates athletes and entertainers. The average high
school kid around Boston could probably name the entire Red Sox team, but they
couldn't name a single living inventor. A career in science and technology is
much more accessible and realistic than a career in sports."
In all-day matches open free to the public today and tomorrow, groups of six
teams will scrimmage on an area roughly the size of a tennis court in
three-on-three games that are a cross between soccer and basketball.
Preprogrammed robots moving autonomously or controlled remotely with joysticks
will race to propel Nerf balls through rectangular holes in glass partitions at
either end of the ''field," or pop them through round holes higher up the walls.
Some robots shoot, some defend, and some scoop up balls.
The teams with the most points in the regional competition will go on to compete
in the national FIRST tournament in Atlanta next month. The regional
competition, the first held in Boston, has drawn teams from New England, the
Mid-Atlantic states, Florida, and even Brazil, including 14 teams that have
never built robots before.
Diagonally across the pit aisle from the Burning Tigers yesterday, pink-shirted
members of Team Queen from Milton's Fontbonne Academy, the only all-girls team
in the regional competition, were fastening to their robot's frame a nylon bag
that will serve as a funnel for Nerf balls. Fontbonne's robot was christened
Killer Queen.
''You need some garlands or balloons up around here," joked one of their
mentors, Northeastern University student Erin Rapacki, who was tooling around
the cavernous arena on a Segway scooter.
''We're going to have it all decked out tomorrow," Ruthann Gallagher, a junior
at Fontbonne, promised her.
Cynthia Andre, a Fontbonne sophomore, was wandering around the arena scouting
the competition and hunting for alliances for the matches. Noting that Team
Queen's robot specializes in gathering up balls and blocking out other robots,
Andre assured her teammates they would be in demand by other teams whose robots
focused more on shooting and scoring. ''Being a feeder robot is very helpful for
a lot of teams," she said hopefully. ''And playing defense is an important
trait."
This year's competition, named Aim High, kicked off Jan. 7, when teams were
given their robotics kits and assignments. They had six weeks to design,
assemble, and program their robots.
For last-minute adjustments or modifications, yesterday was the day. And in a
hallway behind the pits, volunteers from the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration set up a machine shop to help.
Brighton High, a rookie team that worked past midnight on many nights through
January and February, realized at 4 a.m. on the deadline day of Feb. 24 that its
drive mechanism for lifting balls wasn't working as it should. Yesterday
tool-wielding team members were back at work on their 120-pound octagonal robot,
Tigger, replacing its chains with more flexible polycords on the troublesome
drive assembly.
''I've always believed that being good at math and science can change people's
lives," said Elly May O'Toole, a Brighton High physics teacher and faculty
adviser to the robotics team. ''If these kids are good at something that can be
objectively judged, that's something they'll have their whole lives. No one can
take that away from them."
Robert Weisman can be reached at
weisman@globe.com.
All copyrights on this article are reserved to the Boston Globe.
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