Developing a Robotics Outreach Program

1. Developing a Robotics Outreach Program Zan Hecht Justin Woodard April 23rd, 2005

2. Outline • Background Information • Introducing the WPI-EBOT Program • What we did • What about VEX? • What you can do

3. A Little Background Information In 1995, a group of WPI students created the miniFIRST Competition for Team 190. Team members spent three weeks building robots to play a game called “Savage Soccer”. Although the game has changes every year, the name stays the same. The WPI-EBOT program was designed to expand on miniFIRST so that other schools and teams could benefit from it.

4. A Little Background Information The WPI Plan The WPI Plan was created in the 1970s to reform the way students at WPI learn. Under the plan, there are no prerequisites or required courses, and students can fill their schedules with as many independent study courses or projects as they wish. Students also complete three projects: the Major Qualifying Project in which students solve a problem related to their major, the Sufficiency in humanities or arts, and the Interactive Qualifying Project, which is unique to WPI.

5. A Little Background Information The Interactive Qualifying Project “The IQP challenges students to identify, investigate, and report on a topic examining how science or technology interacts with societal structures and values. The objective of the IQP is to enable WPI graduates to understand, as citizens and as professionals, how their careers will affect the larger society of which they are a part.” WPI-EBOT was created as part of an IQP which explored the “Education in a Technological Society”

6. A Little Background Information miniFIRST + IQP = Helping FIRST teams who want to help schools that cannot afford FIRST

7. miniFIRST • Filling the “fall gap” • miniFIRST gave team 190 something to do in the fall, after school started but before the FIRST season, to keep students involved and excited • Team Building • miniFIRST gave the students and mentors a chance to work together to solve a problem. • Student Training • miniFIRST compressed an entire FIRST season, from kickoff to competition, in just a month, and gave students experience in all aspects of being part of a FIRST team, from designing and building to driving and strategy • Mentor Training • miniFIRST pared one college student (usually freshmen) with 6 high school students on each team, and gave the those that had recently crossed over from student to mentor the opportunity to experience things from the “other side”.

8. miniFIRST Video Available at http://users.wpi.edu/~ahecht/MiniFIRST-03b.wmv

9. Expanding miniFIRST • Most Worcester Public Schools have no engineering or pre-engineering programs. • The Massachusetts Department of Education’s Engineering Framework requires schools to incorporate engineering into their curricula. • Team 190 had started many FLL and FRC teams, but there were many schools who wanted something else.

10. Other Programs

11. WPI-EBOT • Combine the best aspects of several robotics competitions • Provide experience in several disciplines • Give schools a way to start pre-engineering programs that their students can get excited about

12. What We Did

13. Overall Timeline • Spring: Begin recruiting schools and sponsors • September: Follow up with schools, kit ordering • October: Teacher training, game development • November: Build Season, on-site support • December: Competition!

14. Getting Schools Involved Similar to starting a FIRST team • Principals are your friends • It is vital that principals feel that they are involved, and schools must be approached through the principals, even though they will probably simply refer you to a technology coordinator or science teacher. Don’t forget that a principal has the power to shut down any program they didn’t personally approve of. • A committed teacher is a must • If the teachers don’t want to be involved, but are being forced by the administration to participate, they cannot be effective mentors to their students. • Schools want to see examples of the program (model robot, video, etc.) • Schools need to know that the program exists and has proven results. • Money can be a hurdle • Although running a WPI-EBOT team costs 1/10th what running a FIRST team does, so things like paying teachers overtime may be more critical concerns for the schools.

15. Finding Money • Within the schools themselves • Grants • Professional Development • Local Companies • Fund Raisers (bake sales, etc)

16. Training Teachers • Give teacher the tools they need to mentor their students. • We wanted to make sure that the teachers weren’t coming into this blind, so we had to teach them everything from basic engineering and programming to things like strategy and gracious professionalism • Give teachers experience working with the kits. • Both the Robovation kits and the VEX kits have their quirks, and teachers need to know what these are and how to get around them. • Provide materials in multiple formats (live, video, text) • Not all teachers could make it to our training sessions, so we provided videos on our web site and produced written manuals that the teachers could read or give to their students.

17. Training Teachers Workshops

18. Training Teachers Workshops • WPI-EBOT ran three workshops with the teachers: • A workshop introducing the kits, giving examples of how to use the parts, and teaching the basic theory behind things like using chains and making maneuverable robots. • A workshop introducing the teacher to C programming and giving them sample code that they can use on their robots. • A third workshop where we demonstrated building and programming two robots from start to finish, and showed the teachers how to use various sensors.

19. Training Teachers Video clip from the presentation available at http://users.wpi.edu/~ahecht/workshopclips_0001.wmv All workshop videos available at http://users.wpi.edu/~ebot/Workshop_video.htm

20. Training Materials

21. Training Materials Written training materials available at http://users.wpi.edu/~ebot/coursedoc.htm

22. Working with Schools

23. Working with Schools • It’s different than mentoring • It’s more teaching the teachers than teaching the students. • Help the mentors help their students • The teachers must still feel that they are in charge. • Introduce the schools to the fundamental concepts of robot competition • There are many things FIRST teams take for granted, such as scouting, driver training, robustness or robots, and gracious professionalism, that aren’t obvious to schools.

24. Kickoff • Like the FIRST Kickoff, but smaller, cheaper, and with less hour-long speeches about “inspiration”. • Live in Worcester and streaming on the web. • Simultaneous release of the rules on the tournament website.

25. Running a Tournament • Find a Space • We hold our competitions in lecture halls or gyms, but any space with adequate viewing and pit space will do • Find People • Don’t forget that you need people for crowd control, queueing, reffing, field reset, scoring, etc. • Make a Schedule • Schools need to know everything at least a week in advance if they are going to send out permission slips, so having a schedule you can keep is important. • Keep People Entertained • You don’t need a FIRST level A/V system, but having upbeat music always makes things more fun. • Scoring • Even if you simply use an Excel spreadsheet, it is important that you have something in place to record and display scores.

26. Running a Tournament Video Available at http://users.wpi.edu/~ahecht/SavageSoccerComp.wmv

27. Results • Of the four Worcester Public High Schools, three participated. • Two of those schools now have FIRST teams. • Each of the Worcester Schools formed two teams. • Including Mass Academy and other FIRST teams, there were a total of 14 robots at the competition.

28. Results

29. Results Video Available at http://users.wpi.edu/~ahecht/feedback_0001.wmv

30. How Vex changes things • Kits readily available from major retailer • Kits are 3x cheaper • Two competitions possible with same kits

31. FIRST VEX Challenge and WPI-EBOT FVC and WPI-EBOT are complementary: • WPI-EBOT provides an alternative for both outreach and preseason training for FRC and FVC teams • The same teams can easily do both WPI-EBOT and FVC • Vex season not compatible with FRC season, but EBOT is over before FRC kickoff • WPI-EBOT uses Savage Soccer game, which is built around smaller, cheaper, easier to build fields, but FVC provides the competition events • WPI-EBOT is about Education, FVC is about Inspiration

32. What YOU can do:

33. What YOU can do: • Start a Savage Soccer team • It’s a great pre-season team building activity, or a good activity for a robotics club that cannot afford the time or money to do FIRST. Those teams can easily do both Savage Soccer and VEX (which three Mass Academy teams did this year) • Hold a local mini-competition • Invite other local FIRST teams or schools to build robots to participate. WPI would provide the Savage Soccer game, you provide the event. • Start a WPI-EBOT “node” • Get involved in introducing engineering into schools where there is none. A FIRST team would be well qualified to provide the same level of support to the schools that the WPI-EBOT group did, and it is a great outreach activity to give back to the community. WPI-EBOT would provide the training materials and support.

34. Contact Us • Email ebot@wpi.edu • Website http://www.erobotics.org • Call Ken Stafford at (508) 831-5000