Robots seize Coliseum!

Budding young engineers bust into the arena with ball-hurling 'bots, intent on reaching today's finals

Saturday, March 04, 2006

JOHN FOYSTON

The Oregonian

Dozens of robots and hundreds of their young human handlers have taken over Portland Memorial Coliseum this weekend.

Today's finals at the First Robotics Competition Pacific Northwest Regional may be the best entertainment value of 2006, and not just because admission is free. No, the sight of opposing alliances of three teams and their robots scrambling to win a ball-shooting game called Aim High is worth paying to see.

By 1 p.m. today, when the finals are scheduled to begin, 46 teams from the Western U.S. and Canada will have been winnowed down to the final few, which will battle for a trip to the 2006 championship in April at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. First is an acronym: For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. It's a nonprofit organization with sponsors such as General Motors, NASA and many others. Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway Human Transporter, founded First in 1989 to make science, math, engineering and technology as cool for kids as sports are.

The scene at the Coliseum this weekend suggests that he's succeeded. Competition began Friday but even Thursday's practice day was abuzz with activity. The pit area seethed with kids and their mentors working on their robots. Tools and parts littered every surface, and the laptop:human ratio approached one-to-one.

Teams wore get-ups that ranged from the pirate capes of Albany/Lebanon's team, the Scalawags, to the grass skirts and Hawaiian shirts worn by team Celetor from Seattle Lutheran High School. Everyone wore safety glasses because safety is serious business at First events, so the Philomath High School team looked the part with hardhats, orange safety vests and festoons of yellow Robot Zone tape.

Santiam Christian Schools worked in a pit area that looked like a stone castle complete with rusting portcullis, while the Wilsonville Robotics Team had a black pavilion decorated with red hotrod flames.

Out in the arena, teams set up their control boards three across behind high Plexiglas barriers in each end zone of the playing field. They formed temporary alliances -- red or blue -- with two other teams. That's one of the ways to foster what organizers call gracious professionalism: The team you battle in this round may be by your side in the next, so grace in victory or defeat is the order of the day.

The order of the day at this competition appears to be barely controlled chaos, at least to someone unaccustomed to omnidirectional sensory input. Music blared over the speakers along with screeching whistles marking the four periods of each match. A game clock counted down seconds on the big video screen as 5-foot-tall robots swarmed over the floor, occasionally stopping to fire foam balls at goals.

Drivers controlled their 'bots with joysticks as teammates lobbed balls at their robots to refill the ball hoppers. Some robots could hoover up loose balls from the floor and fire them at the goals. Some could sweep up balls in mechanical aprons and dump them, a dozen at a time, into one of the two one-point low goals.

Some robots couldn't do anything at all, and team members huddled over stalled machines, fiddling with connections, batteries, boards or jammed ball conveyors. And some robots toppled over and turned turtle as they tried to climb the steep ramp to the platform where they could earn extra points.

It's all about compromise, says Boeing engineer Matt Atkinson, who founded an early team in Florida in 1997 and now volunteers as a ringside technical adviser. "The ramps are steep on purpose," he says. "There are design goals that don't necessarily mesh, just like engineering problems in the real world, so the teams have to decide what they want their robot to be good at."

Many of the more than 100 volunteers that make this regional competition work are engineers or technicians -- or extreme tool users, such as Seattle contractor Brogan Thomsen, who managed the ring and was the busiest man of the weekend. He was constantly moving despite wearing maybe 20 pounds of gear: a headset, an orange plastic visor, a two-way radio, heavy suspenders and a utility belt with holstered scissors, cell phone, multipurpose tool and who knew what else.

John Sherman, in the castle pit of the Santiam Christian school team, was one of four current or retired Hewlett-Packard engineers who mentor that team. "These kids have learned so much about engineering: They have problems they have to solve, time pressure that they work under, different personalities that have to work together and deadlines that must be met. This is like what they'll encounter in their careers."

The experience can begin in middle school or earlier as part of a First Lego League robot team, and it stands these kids in good stead should they decide to pursue technical careers.

"It's good for the sponsoring companies, too," says Atkinson, "because their engineers are working alongside the brightest kids in the country. And believe me, they know who they want to hire once those kids graduate."

John Foyston: 503-221-8368; johnfoyston@neews.oregonian.com