ROBOTS RULE
High school students test skills
Artemis is shorter than most of the other robots but he’s a hard worker, taking cubes off his little shelf and placing them on an elevated scale in a feverish race with rival robots. The diminutive fellow is the brainchild of the Build A Dream allgirls rookie robotic team — a group of six high schoolers who competed against a field of more than 35 teams over the weekend at the fifth annual Windsor Essex Great Lakes District FIRST Robotics competition held at the St. Denis Centre. Teams had six weeks to design and build a 120-pound robot that competed in an arena setting. The robots attempted to climb a scale tower, win a confrontation with “the boss” at the top, and ultimately escape the game.
“We all each had our individual mental pictures of this robot, but when we discussed it together, we were able to have some sort of agreement on some components, but disregard other components, until we finally came up with our lovely robot Artemis,” said Sophia Symons, a 16-year-old Assumption high school student who was a member of the all-girls team. “Our robot, we’ve been through a lot of challenges with it,” she said. The alliance — each with three robotics teams — with the highest score at the end of the match defeated the boss and won. Teammate Madison Vickery said the idea for Artemis progressed over time, with many modifications along the way. “There was a lot of trial and error with it,” said Vickery, 16, who attends Ursuline College high school in Chatham. “Being a rookie team, not all of us knew what we were doing.”
They were helped along the way by a group of all-female mentors — a first for a FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) robotics team in Ontario.
Maddie Drouillard, an electrical engineering student at the University of Waterloo who is on a co-op program at CenterLine — a sponsor of the team — is one of the women who guided the girls. “It’s been amazing. The girls are best friends,” Drouillard said. When asked what benefits the girls received from being surrounded only by females, Droullard didn’t skip a beat.
“I think it’s a level of familiarity. There are a lot of young girls who are more comfortable, they get more comfortable around similarminded people, they can talk a lot more freely together.” Drouillard, who competed on the Sandwich high school team when she was a student there, said she enjoyed mentoring more than being on a team.
“I find as a mentor, my goal now isn’t necessarily to win, but to make them have the most fun they can possibly have,” she said. “I want them to have the best experience … and to gain skills that will help them in the future, in post-secondary education and in the job life.” All of the teams were competing for a chance to move on to the FIRST Ontario Provincial Championships, being held from April 1214 in Mississauga, and the FIRST Robotics Global Championships from April 25-28 in Detroit. There were about 1,500 students from Michigan and Ontario battling for a variety of awards. Statistically, students who participate in the event are twice as likely to attend university or college, as well as to major in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. “The success of our regional industry depends upon our ability to cultivate the next generation of skilled workers, innovators and technology entrepreneurs,” said Yvonne Pilon, president and CEO of WEtech Alliance, which helped spearhead the growth of FIRST Robotics in Windsor and Essex County and led the bid to host the regional event.
The Build A Dream team won the Rookie Inspiration Award, the same recognition they received last week at a competition in Waterloo. They also were part of the winning alliance of three teams: Build A Dream, the Killer Bees from Notre Dame prep school in Auburn Hills, Mich., and SabreBytes from Sandwich high school.