Developing a Robotics Outreach Program

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Developing a Robotics Outreach Program

• Zan Hecht
• Justin Woodard
• April 23rd, 2005

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Outline

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

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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.
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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.

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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

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A Little Background Information

• miniFIRST IQP
• Helping FIRST teams who want to help schools that
  cannot afford FIRST

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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.

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miniFIRST
Video Available at http//users.wpi.edu/ahecht/Mi
niFIRST-03b.wmv
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Expanding miniFIRST

• Most Worcester Public Schools have no engineering
  or pre-engineering programs.
• The Massachusetts Department of Educations
  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.

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Other Programs
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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

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What We Did
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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!

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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. Dont forget that a principal
  has the power to shut down any program they
  didnt personally approve of.
• A committed teacher is a must
• If the teachers dont 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.

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Finding Money

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

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Training Teachers

• Give teacher the tools they need to mentor their
  students.
• We wanted to make sure that the teachers werent
  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.

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Training Teachers

• Workshops

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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.

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Training Teachers
Video clip from the presentation available at
http//users.wpi.edu/ahecht/workshopclips_0001.wm
v All workshop videos available at
http//users.wpi.edu/ebot/Workshop_video.htm
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Training Materials
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Training Materials
Written training materials available at
http//users.wpi.edu/ebot/coursedoc.htm
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Working with Schools
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Working with Schools

• Its different than mentoring
• Its 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 arent obvious to schools.

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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.

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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
• Dont 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 dont 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.

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Running a Tournament
Video Available at http//users.wpi.edu/ahecht/Sa
vageSoccerComp.wmv
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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.

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Results
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Results
Video Available at http//users.wpi.edu/ahecht/fe
edback_0001.wmv
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How Vex changes things

• Kits readily available from major retailer
• Kits are 3x cheaper
• Two competitions possible with same kits

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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

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What YOU can do
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What YOU can do

• Start a Savage Soccer team
• Its 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.

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Contact Us

• Email ebot_at_wpi.edu
• Website http//www.erobotics.org
• Call Ken Stafford at [phone]