Robotics teaches more than engineering and technology

Posted: March 12, 2008

At the end of a nine-hour practice three days before the robot shipping date and the night before a practice competition, Mukwonago High School FIRST Robotics Team 930 shuddered at the grinding noise emanating from one of the robot's wheels.

Ripping apart the robot to reach the wheel's innards, team members discovered a missing clip, metal shavings and ground gears. A few phone calls later and mechanical engineering mentor Loren Tieman of Mukwonago was heading east for a new gearbox as the team hunkered down for more work.

READY TO ROLL - Mukwonago High School Robotics Team 930 members (from left) Greg Bluma, Kelly Huber, Greg Billetdeaux, mentor Loren Tieman, Sam Scharles and Jared San Miguel work on the team's robot before a practice run at Waukesha South High School on Feb. 17. The robot was shipped Feb. 19 to the U.S. Cellular Arena for the Wisconsin Regional FIRST Robotics Competition on March 13-15.

"Almost everything hasn't worked at one point or another, and we've had to fix a lot of things and figure out new ways to get it to work," said Mukwonago High School freshman Rachel Brown. "We learned to always be prepared for something to go wrong."

According to Tieman, who has been involved in FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) since 1999, that is what sets the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) apart from other types of learning.

"In a school environment, they're used to being told," Tieman said. "Here we want them to figure it out, to tell them as little as possible and let them learn and fail and learn and fail, and eventually they'll realize it's OK to fail. They find a way to fix it, and, voila, they realize they can do anything."

More than five hours later on that February day, the remaining handful of team members pieced the robot back together, set it on the floor and tried again. Whizzing across the shop floor, the robot, dubbed Ursa Major - being the product of Team 930 the Mukwonago BEARs (Building Extremely Awesome Robots) - was up and running again.

Competition

With the robot crated and shipped Feb. 19, the team has spent the past weeks fundraising and preparing for Wisconsin regional competition March 13-15 at the U.S. Cellular Arena, where Team 930 will face 60 other FRC teams. This year's challenge, titled Overdrive, is played on a 54-foot-by-27-foot track divided by a fence, which is crossed by an overpass. Two three-team alliances race counterclockwise around the track, manipulating huge trackballs, scoring points by crossing lines with the robot and with the trackballs.

While the initial challenges faced by team members revolved around learning the fine points of mechanical and electrical engineering under the tight deadline of creating a functioning robot in six weeks, along the way they discovered lessons in teamwork, time management, marketing, creativity, leadership, respect, responsibility and problem solving.

Mentor Jeff Fenstermaker, an electrical engineer with GE for nine years, helped the team work through its gearbox dilemma, among other problems. To him, the strength of FIRST Robotics lies in hands-on experience and the freedom the program gives kids to make their own decisions to achieve the goals of the challenge.

Learning to think

"It's not cookbook. It's not cookie-cutter like some things can be, so it definitely forces them out of the box to think through the problem," Fenstermaker said. "That's about as real as it gets."

Although this is Fenstermaker's first experience mentoring a robotics team, GE has sponsored teams previously and this year is sponsoring about 17 teams, he said.

From an employer's perspective, FRC grooms future prospective employees where behavioral skills outweigh technical expertise.

"Can you work through a problem on your own, not just memorize a textbook, and be able to use some intuition?" noted Fenstermaker. "It's a huge part of the hiring process these days."

In the past, Tieman has employed FRC members.

"These kids, I know what they are capable of because I've worked with them," Tieman said. "They're motivated, and that's something you can't teach anybody."

MHS sophomore Greg Billetdeaux, the lone returning robotics member, was heavily involved in building the robot and became more familiar with computer-aided design this year.

"It's really good for your career," Billetdeaux said. "It helps you work better with people. It helps your people strengths."

WIRED FOR SPEED - Mukwonago High School Robotics Team 930 members Andrew Bauer and Sam Scharles work with mentor Jeff Fenstermaker, an electrical engineer for GE, a major sponsor for the Mukwonago B.E.A.R.s. Fenstermaker mentored the controls group, which was responsible for the electrical wiring and computer programing for the robot.

"I saw what they were doing, and it was really exciting because they were doing what we were doing, but to the next power," Scharles said.

Scharles, who hopes to go into electrical engineering, said FRC creates a desire to learn.

"When you come here, it makes you want to learn more because I can actually use this and apply this," said Scharles. "It's not just in a book somewhere."

Still, the most important skill she thinks FRC offers has nothing to do with the robot or engineering.

"I think the biggest skill would have to be being a better person all around, being gracious to everyone, being able to understand patience," Scharles said. "Everything you can change about a person gets changed."

MHS freshman J.D. Hartley, the team's programmer, indicated the people skills as one thing he learned that will help him in life.

"If I listed everything, I could probably write an essay," Hartley said. "It's just a lot of little things that really add up later."