How a robotics club in Silicon Valley helps prepare a new generation of engineers
In Mountain View, California, today is a beautiful day. The Civic Center Plaza has temporarily become a mini-exhibition of new technologies in the open air and is filled with devices and inventions that would have been considered fantasy only ten years ago. Children in protective helmets rush around on electric skateboards, the robot messenger sneaks through the crowd, and his fellow robots prepare pizza in kiosks.
But the main attraction is located on the eastern edge of the area. A small robot assembled by Spartan Robotics Highway Mountain View Club members buzzes with motors, spins gears, and lets out a whole line of yellow balls in a homemade ring. Every year the club takes part in the FIRST Robotics Competition, an international tournament in robotics, which was founded in 1989 to inspire young people to actively pursue science and create new technologies. This time, the “Spartans” had six weeks to assemble a robot that could shoot balls, pick up circular objects from the floor and climb a rope.
A one-day mini-exhibition was organized three years ago for companies from Mountain View who want to demonstrate their new technological developments to people. On average, it manages to visit about a thousand people. In the same place, Spartan Robotics shows its new robot in order to draw public attention to robotics and to join the ranks of members of the club with future engineers.
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The robot, which the guys from the club called Fin (Fyn), suddenly shoots another bursts of plastic balls, prompting rapturous cries from the assembled children.
“It's great to see such a reaction of the children to what we are doing here,” says Ginger Schmidt, one of the captains of the team that goes to Harvey Mudd College this fall. “We want the children to understand that they, too, can create something like that.”
The club was organized by a small group of schoolchildren in 2002. At that time, they were allowed to use part of the classroom for their experiments, provided that by the end of the class the children had cleaned everything up and put things in order. Now Spartan Robotics has its own premises and specialized equipment, and the club itself is considered one of the most elite robotic programs in the world.
Spartan Robotics is the second most accomplished club in the San Francisco Bay Area. They are overtaken only by a private high school in San Jose, whose team has already won several international robotics tournaments. At the beginning of the year, the Spartans won the regional division competition in San Francisco, and in April took part in the World Championships in Houston and reached the division finals.
The club welcomes newcomers, regardless of their experience and level of knowledge. “It’s not necessary to come to us by understanding robotics,” says the children of Schuh. “Yes, at first all this may seem complicated, but you will quickly learn everything.”
Many students continue to work in this area even after graduation: they develop software that will increase driving safety, create medical robots for early detection of lung cancer, and even design drones for Google’s secret “Project X”.
Later that evening, thirty members of the Spartan Robotics are stuffed into their classroom and have a weekly meeting. Now is the off-season, therefore, meeting new members and small experiments are mainly on the agenda. One of the agenda items: "How to disassemble different things."
At first, after the creation of the club, the female half of the school was hardly interested in them, but with the arrival of Shu, the situation changed dramatically. In 2016, all three captain "chairs" were taken by girls, in 2017 there were two girls out of three captains-girls, and next year the team will switch to a management model with one captain ... and this will again be a girl. “We just tell the girls that they can achieve absolutely everything they want,” says Shu with a big smile.
In the next class, programmers are working on the code, staring intently at the screens of ThinkPad notebooks. This is where most of the invisible work of the audience is performed. The guys write special applications that tie commands from the consoles to individual engines and systems of robots. In another room next door, a group of students works with SolidWorks computer-aided design system.
To create Fina, the club needed to model more than 200 unique parts. This brought the guys the reputation of the authors of one of the most difficult robots in the tournament. Now they are working in SolidWorks on the bearing, which will become part of the updated engine and provide greater mobility to the robots of the club.
Highschool student James Doherty (James Doherty) designed many precision pads and shafts of the robot using a ThinkPad. “I have worked with computer-aided design software before,” he says. “But I've never done something so complicated.” A large amount of memory and high performance ThinkPad allowed him to work with several projects at once and quickly make changes to them. “This is a great tool. Versatile, portable and powerful, and if necessary, some of the components can be updated without any problems, says James. “In fact, with a ThinkPad, you can design a robot without ever touching a soldering iron or machine tool.”
Fourteen-year-old Xenia Stigan (Ksennia Stiagan) controls the CNC machine (computer-controlled machine) commands. “Now we can cut wood, metal or plastic parts!” She says. Before joining Spartan Robotics, Xennia had no idea what a universal wrench is. Now she is able to cope even with a complex computerized machine.
During the four-month competition season, students spend more than 30 hours a week at the club, including Saturday sessions that last from noon until midnight. Xennia laughs when asked about long “working” hours. For her, the work of designing and creating a robot is more like a game.
Xennia learned a lot in just one year at the club: how to control a lathe, how to work in a team, how to design new parts on a ThinkPad. She also understood who she wants to do in the future: she wants to become a mechanical engineer. “And I understood all this thanks to the robots!” Says the girl.
But the main attraction is located on the eastern edge of the area. A small robot assembled by Spartan Robotics Highway Mountain View Club members buzzes with motors, spins gears, and lets out a whole line of yellow balls in a homemade ring. Every year the club takes part in the FIRST Robotics Competition, an international tournament in robotics, which was founded in 1989 to inspire young people to actively pursue science and create new technologies. This time, the “Spartans” had six weeks to assemble a robot that could shoot balls, pick up circular objects from the floor and climb a rope.
A one-day mini-exhibition was organized three years ago for companies from Mountain View who want to demonstrate their new technological developments to people. On average, it manages to visit about a thousand people. In the same place, Spartan Robotics shows its new robot in order to draw public attention to robotics and to join the ranks of members of the club with future engineers.
')
The robot, which the guys from the club called Fin (Fyn), suddenly shoots another bursts of plastic balls, prompting rapturous cries from the assembled children.
“It's great to see such a reaction of the children to what we are doing here,” says Ginger Schmidt, one of the captains of the team that goes to Harvey Mudd College this fall. “We want the children to understand that they, too, can create something like that.”
The club was organized by a small group of schoolchildren in 2002. At that time, they were allowed to use part of the classroom for their experiments, provided that by the end of the class the children had cleaned everything up and put things in order. Now Spartan Robotics has its own premises and specialized equipment, and the club itself is considered one of the most elite robotic programs in the world.
Spartan Robotics is the second most accomplished club in the San Francisco Bay Area. They are overtaken only by a private high school in San Jose, whose team has already won several international robotics tournaments. At the beginning of the year, the Spartans won the regional division competition in San Francisco, and in April took part in the World Championships in Houston and reached the division finals.
The club welcomes newcomers, regardless of their experience and level of knowledge. “It’s not necessary to come to us by understanding robotics,” says the children of Schuh. “Yes, at first all this may seem complicated, but you will quickly learn everything.”
Many students continue to work in this area even after graduation: they develop software that will increase driving safety, create medical robots for early detection of lung cancer, and even design drones for Google’s secret “Project X”.
Later that evening, thirty members of the Spartan Robotics are stuffed into their classroom and have a weekly meeting. Now is the off-season, therefore, meeting new members and small experiments are mainly on the agenda. One of the agenda items: "How to disassemble different things."
At first, after the creation of the club, the female half of the school was hardly interested in them, but with the arrival of Shu, the situation changed dramatically. In 2016, all three captain "chairs" were taken by girls, in 2017 there were two girls out of three captains-girls, and next year the team will switch to a management model with one captain ... and this will again be a girl. “We just tell the girls that they can achieve absolutely everything they want,” says Shu with a big smile.
In the next class, programmers are working on the code, staring intently at the screens of ThinkPad notebooks. This is where most of the invisible work of the audience is performed. The guys write special applications that tie commands from the consoles to individual engines and systems of robots. In another room next door, a group of students works with SolidWorks computer-aided design system.
To create Fina, the club needed to model more than 200 unique parts. This brought the guys the reputation of the authors of one of the most difficult robots in the tournament. Now they are working in SolidWorks on the bearing, which will become part of the updated engine and provide greater mobility to the robots of the club.
Highschool student James Doherty (James Doherty) designed many precision pads and shafts of the robot using a ThinkPad. “I have worked with computer-aided design software before,” he says. “But I've never done something so complicated.” A large amount of memory and high performance ThinkPad allowed him to work with several projects at once and quickly make changes to them. “This is a great tool. Versatile, portable and powerful, and if necessary, some of the components can be updated without any problems, says James. “In fact, with a ThinkPad, you can design a robot without ever touching a soldering iron or machine tool.”
Fourteen-year-old Xenia Stigan (Ksennia Stiagan) controls the CNC machine (computer-controlled machine) commands. “Now we can cut wood, metal or plastic parts!” She says. Before joining Spartan Robotics, Xennia had no idea what a universal wrench is. Now she is able to cope even with a complex computerized machine.
During the four-month competition season, students spend more than 30 hours a week at the club, including Saturday sessions that last from noon until midnight. Xennia laughs when asked about long “working” hours. For her, the work of designing and creating a robot is more like a game.
Xennia learned a lot in just one year at the club: how to control a lathe, how to work in a team, how to design new parts on a ThinkPad. She also understood who she wants to do in the future: she wants to become a mechanical engineer. “And I understood all this thanks to the robots!” Says the girl.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/410815/
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