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Lee's Summit Robotics Team Rock the KC...
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Lee's Summit Robotics Team Rock the KC Regionals
March 13, 2010
By Jeff Grisamore
Contributing Writer
Photo: Lee's Summit West High School's Team Titanium Robot
Last Saturday afternoon I attended the Kansas City regional competition for FIRST Robotics at Hale Arena, next to Kemper. Both Lee’s Summit West High School and Lee’s Summit High School had teams competing in the event. The Lee’s Summit North High School robotics team, the Broncobots, will be competing in another upcoming regional event.
Lee’s Summit is the first city in the nation to have the robotics teams from all its public high schools qualify for nationals in the same year. Last year, the Lee’s Summit West Team Titanium, Lee’s Summit High School’s Team Driven and the Lee’s Summit North High School Broncobots all qualified for the nationals in Atlanta.
On Saturday, Lee’s Summit High School’s Team Driven again qualified for nationals, winning the Engineering Inspiration Award. Lee’s Summit West Team Titanium member, Colin Robinette, a junior, also qualified individually for nationals, capturing the Dean’s List Award, named after FIRST Robotics co-founder, Dean Kamen—the inventor of the Segway, the battery-operated vehicle on which riders stand.
Paul Sites, a senior at Lee’s Summit High School, was also one of just two students regionally—along with Robinette—to win the Dean’s List Award, also qualifying him individually for nationals. Robinette gave me a tour at Team Titanium’s Open House on Sunday, February 7th at Billy Goat Industries in Lee’s Summit that hosts their team shop in which their robot is built and tested. In addition, Lee’s Summit High School’s Team Driven also won the Excellence in Design Award.
Lee’s Summit West Team Titanium junior, Josh Hartwig, gave me an excellent and informative tour of the competition floor and the pit area in which the teams work on their robots and escorted me to the sideline and the stands to join Team Titanium and Team Driven.
The closest thing I can compare a FIRST Robotics regional event to is a NASCAR race—very high energy with loud music, lights and cameras and a cheering crowd. This year’s competition called Breakaway pits three teams in an alliance against three other teams. By remote control, their robots basically played soccer, in which offense and defense is crucial.
With every score the crowd roared. The floor speed of the robots was amazing and the defensive blocking looked like a demolition derby. Robots also had to climb over obstacles. Some scoring shots on goal were all the way across the field. It was incredible!
FIRST is an acronym: “For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.” The organization was founded by Dean Kamen and Woody Flowers, a professor emeritus at MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Woody was in attendance Saturday and I had a chance to speak with him. He talked about how FIRST Robotics is important for encouraging young students to pursue professions in METS or STEM fields, two acronyms that mutually stand for Mathematics, Engineering, Technology and Science.
Flowers also spoke of how FIRST Robotics is transformational for so many students in terms of interscholastic achievement and building self-esteem. He also noted that 10 percent of incoming MIT freshman are FIRST Robotics alumni.
Members of robotics teams at Lee’s Summit high schools have earned scholarships to prestigious engineering schools such as MIT and the University of Missouri-Rolla. One dad who assists the Lee’s Summit West team is a tenured engineer with a local branch of a national firm and noted that what these students do is incredibly advanced. He said, “There is nothing I could tell them they did not already know.”
Like the different divisions within NASCAR racing, FIRST Robotics also has age divisions, starting with Junior FIRST LEGO League for elementary school students, ages 6 to 9 years of age, then FIRST LEGO League for 9 to 16-year-olds, including middle schoolers, and FIRST Tech Challenge and FIRST Robotics for high school students.
FIRST Robotics has grown from about 1,000 teams nationally in 2004 to nearly 2,000 teams since. Over 200,000 students worldwide are involved in FIRST Robotics. A national and international competition will be hosted in Missouri in St. Louis next year.
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