Team Guyana at the FIRST Global Challenge, 2017

Ryan Benschop is 17 years old, and is currently studying four subjects (Business, Economics, Law and Psychology) through the Cambridge International Advanced Level programme at Nations’ Sixth Form College. He previously attended Queen’s College, and graduated from fifth form last year. His main interest is entrepreneurship, particularly within the tech space, and he intends to pursue this field upon completing sixth form.

This past week, I, along with eight other members of STEM Guyana’s robotics team, had the pleasure of participating in the FIRST Global Challenge 2017. FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) was founded in the US in 1989 to inspire young people’s interest and participation in science and technology. FIRST Global is a new challenge designed to ignite a global passion for STEM, by having national teams design and build a robot from scratch given a kit of materials, and compete in person in a series of games, which are modeled after a pressing world problem.

The 2017 competition, “H2O FLOW” addressed water scarcity and contamination issues. The premise given was that two villages exist on either side of a contaminated river, and villagers compete to create and store purified water in their respective reserves (a local example of this would be the 1995 OMAI spill where cyanide and heavy metal laden water spilled into the Essequibo river affecting areas like Bartica). In a laboratory up stream of the contamination, however, the villagers unite to research the contaminants and ultimately create a purification system so contaminants are removed before they reach the villages, thus providing clean water for all. In the end, each village also prepares for the coming flood by searching for higher ground. The actual course upon which the robots compete is thus designed to award points based on the number of contaminants each robot gives to the laboratory and the amount of clean water stored in an elevated location more resilient to flooding. The contaminants and clean water were distinguished by the colour of the balls (orange vs blue respectively) during the competition and a ramp was used to indicate the higher-level reservoir.

Team Guyana comprised six students - Arrianna Mahase, Sahief Poese, both first year Computer Science students at the University of Guyana, Christopher Nelson, a student of electrical engineering at the Government Technical Institute, Vevekeanand Ramnarace, a science student of the Bishops’ High School, Anthony Frank, an expert self-taught programmer, and myself, Ryan Benschop, an A-Levels student at Nations’ Sixth Form College. There were three mentors - Farnaz Baksh, team manager, Horace Moseley, Public Relations specialist, and Ricky Chan, team coach. The team was supported by many additional members, who also played important roles in the overall preparation, and led and organized by Karen Abrams, co-founder of STEM Guyana. Each person added to the team in their unique and valuable way, and the resulting chemistry contributed significantly to our outstanding results.

Preparation for such a global competition was no effortless task; the team had been working diligently since we received our robot kit early in April, a mere four months ago. The frequency of our meetings steadily increased from Saturdays only, to daily, as we became increasingly anxious and determined to perfect our creation. In trying to design a robot that completed every task of the game efficiently and effectively, we faced numerous issues, as the challenges of the game were not simple. One of the main reasons for our success at this competition was our ability to observe our immediate surroundings, and creatively implement existing local structures and mechanisms into our design.

Perhaps the most troubling task for every team was to create a system for the robot to pull itself off the ground using a climbing bar. The difficulty of this task was due to the weight of the robot - over 20 pounds, far too much for the small motors the robot used to lift. After spending weeks tinkering and reshaping, hoping that this and that design worked, we thought of a similar problem, which was already solved in our local environment. We looked to the koker, without which Guyana’s coastline would not exist. This intricate mechanism is what has enabled the effective drainage of our low-lying coast, six feet below sea level. It offered a potential answer to our problems. If such a mechanism can allow just one or two persons to lift a door weighing hundreds of pounds, would it be possible for us to create a similar mechanism to allow our robot’s tiny motors to easily lift over 20 pounds? On this thought, the team visited several kokers around the city, and studied the design and mechanics behind each one. Upon realizing that the very mechanisms and parts which allowed the koker to be lifted were in our own robot kit, we immediately began working on a similar system. This pull-up system worked perfectly, and never failed us during the competition. This, among many other difficulties, resulted in hundreds of hours and many all-nighters spent, as Team