Robo-obsession

The first thing you must understand is that none  of my children are the least bit interested in Robotics. None.  Not so much as an inkling of interest.  They're all into things like Art and Music and Literature, Philosophy, Theology.  You know, things that don't actually do anything, other than to make the world a much more pleasant place to live.

Not a gear-head among 'em.

Well, what is a poor engineer to do with such a swaddle of progeny?

Red Storm Robotics - #3875

It really wasn't my idea, this getting involved in Robotics.  I was horn-swoggled, bamboozled, tied up and tossed into the back of the cart like yesterday's rubbish and hauled off to the other side of the High School - you know, the side where they do things like Carpentry and Metalwork and Electricity and Plumbing, cutting huge timbers into joists and forming furniture from the scraps that fall off the trees.

Industrial Arts.  Vo-Tech.  Where they teach Useful Trades.

I admit, it was the smell that took hold of my brain and reduced it to the consistency of sawdust.  That smell - that wonderful, sweet, captivating smell from my youth.  The alluring scent of freshly-cut plywood.  Pine boards.  Oak.  Mahogany.  Cedar.  Oh, no drug in the world, no perfume made by the hands of man can compete with the sweet smell of the castings from the miter saw, the sander, the shaper, the file.

And that would have been enough if they hadn't tossed that other smell along with it, the smell of circuitry, of electronics, of soldering pencils and rosin-core solder, of overheating transistors and spinning motors.  There was no resisting it now.

I was dragged in three years ago, kicking and screaming.  And found, actually much to my regret, that I truthfully didn't have the time available.  My adventure lasted only a short while before work took over and there was nothing left.

Last year, it was a slightly different tale.  There was more time, but alas!  How can I justify being involved in an activity in which none of my children have an interest?  I survived the season.  Somehow.  But felt horribly guilty about it the entire time.

And this year.  I had planned on abandoning them all by the first of the year, after having attended nearly all the sessions prior to Christmas.  But as it turned out, there was no other mentor available to teach them the proper wiring and electrical knowledge they needed.  There was no choice.  It had to be me.

And I secretly smiled.  Because I do love these children.  They are not mine, they share no genetics with me, but they do share an obsession with the robot, an obsession that has lain dormant inside of me for lo these forty hears.

Competing at Gull Lake

Of course, I have my objections to the current methods.  After all, when I started doing robotics, it was all hand-made, home-made, DIY, making things up as you go, a veritable Wild West of random gears, motors and circuitry.  These days, it's corporate sponsorships, minimum purchases, well-defined Lego-style structures, and your choice between one or two main suppliers for all your Robotics needs.

I miss the days of the Wild West.

On the plus side, there's more to do than simply bolting together an Erector Set framework and a set of wheels and motors, wiring in a set of controllers and calling it good.  Now there are actual programming languages, stepper motors, sensors, video cameras, wireless routers, and all manner of bells and whistles we only could dream of in those long-lost days.

But I don't really care about the hardware, not really.  It's not the metal that matters, it's the mind behind it.  The learning mind.  The high-school student who is fascinated enough to learn about electronics, motors, computers, physics.

And there are students who have very little interest in the robots themselves, but are very interested in organizing projects, spreading the word, marketing, fundraising, and all those other horrible things that have to be done to get a project off the ground but I'd rather not be doing.  People who actually look forward to attending competitions, learning cheers, wearing silly costumes, dancing to silly music, and generally trying to make sure everyone else is having a good time.

Some days we're Blue, Some days we're Red

Me, I just want to make robots that think and move and do.  But I love being with the kids who want to do so much more.  They have such a heart for it. And for each other.  And they don't mind us old folks hanging around and helping out!

We spent a long time working on this.  Prep work started way back at the beginning of the school year.  We taught the kids how to plan things out, how to set things up. Then, right after the beginning of the year, we got our Challenge from the FIRST folks, and we went to work putting all those plans into fruition, coming up with our solution to the problem, framing a basic robot and filling in all the details.  January, February and March were spent - multiple nights per week - accelerating the pace of the construction until we had turned those designs out of our heads and into reality. 

And then we took it on the road, to Competitions.

First to Gull Lake High School, for a 2-day intense series of battles pitting two teams of 3 in cooperative alliance against each other.  We were #6 out of 40. We made it to the Finals.  And we fought well.  But we didn't finish as high as we had hoped.

Then the big competition at Grand Valley State University.  Another two days, another series of alliances and battles.  We didn't do so well at that one.  We got as high as #29 out of 40.  But there were other teams with superior alliances and better solutions. We didn't make it to the finals that time.  We had to be satisfied with what we had accomplished.

And we had accomplished a lot.  We had built a solid team, a group of friends with a common goal of learning, working together, playing together, competing together.

And then it was all over.

Til next year.

Will Build Robots for Food