On March 19 and 20, 2022, I was honored to have the opportunity to be a judge at the NE FIRST Robotics North Shore District Event. This event was held at the Walter Hawkes Field House at Reading Memorial High School and was the first NE FIRST Reading event in the last two years due to COVID.
FIRST is a national and international organization with teams from all over the world competing each year in a challenge. There are different challenges for different age groups, which start as early as Grade 3. In the FIRST Robotics events, teams compete at district events in teams of three, collect points over the weekend and then the top 8 teams pick two other teams in an alliance to compete for the overall championship. There is an amazing amount of teamwork, team spirit, and collaboration among the teams.
This year’s challenge is called rapid react. In RAPID REACTSM presented by The Boeing Company, teams must use innovative engineering, creative thinking, and teamwork to reimagine the future of safe, high-speed travel, and lightning-fast deliveries to propel the next evolution of transportation forward – in this world and beyond. Below is a video of the challenge.
The matches are a combination of the Super Bowl and NASCAR with music, play by play action, and excitement. Teams have a specified number of days to build their robot to accomplish the challenge. Each team has several matches over the two day event, so quality and durability is critical to the success of the robot.
But, FIRST is so much more than a robot challenge. The most successful teams run their group like a corporation with a business plan and sub teams that each have roles and responsibilities including software management, technology, robot design, community outreach, safety, and fundraising. FIRST teams reach out to the community, promote STEM activities with younger children, and mentor other teams.
As a judge, my role is to work collaboratively with all of the other judges to determine who is best qualified to win the many designated awards that are presented at the end of the weekend. There are two types of awards that judges award, Machine/Creativity/Innovation Awards and Team Attribute Awards. Machine, Creativity, and Innovation awards focus on the different aspects of the robot. These include the following:
Autonomous Award sponsored by Ford
Creativity Award sponsored by Rockwell Automation
Excellence in Engineering Award
Industrial Design Award sponsored by General Motors
Team attribute awards focus more on those intangible skills that make a team more cohesive. There are also awards for Rookie teams. These include the following with the criteria in the link:
Gracious Professionalism® Award
Imagery Award in honor of Jack Kamen
This is where the fun is. Every team is worthy of an award, unfortunately, there are more teams than awards. A judge needs to do their diligence, go into the pits (where the teams are in between matches) and here the stories of these teams. The stories that the students share are amazing. This year, because of COVID the past two years, most teams were starting from scratch with their community outreach, fund raising, and recruiting of team members. For some team members, it was the first time they had ever been in a FIRST event. Some teams are not school based, so they have the additional task of renting space to work on their robot, identifying mentors to support them, and finding business partners. Other teams are school based, but do not have a dedicated space to work on their robot, so they have to use a garage space at a team members home.
But, when you talk to each team and each student, you see and hear enthusiasm, spirit, collaboration, and dedication. Team spirit is evident the entire weekend as teams cheer on each other during the matches. Students say that FIRST has motivated them to pursue STEM fields in college.
A special thank you goes out the Reading Robockets, Team 4761, who were the host of the weekend event.
The Journey-The Next Chapter 