This
time of the year we are preparing for summer robotics programs for students,
summer training for
educators including programming languages that provide
fundamental communications for any robotic system. Many students around the
state are preparing for national competitions in FIRST Robotics, BEST, VEX and
many other competitions that require designing, building, and programming an
autonomous robot to perform certain tasks within given constraints which could
include time, materials, cost, size, and functionality. With mentoring from employees
in the manufacturing industry, we hope these outreach initiatives enable team
members/participants to gain increased awareness of technical careers involving
robotics as well as the skills needed to become successful in those careers.
Indeed,
robots have become ubiquitous in our society and an integral part of
manufacturing. Robotics researchers around the country are pushing their
robotic capabilities to the edge every day. Typically, researchers compete for
funds by writing grant proposals to a government agency, foundation, or other
organization. A long technical document defining previous successes,
accomplishments, a research plan and anticipated results are funded based on
the organization’s criteria.
In
recent years, funding agencies have turned to research level competitions as a
way to award funding. This strategy
focuses researchers on specific outcomes – just like student robotics
competitions. There are distinct advantages for an organization to fund such a
competition. All “proposals” focus on particular outcomes which drive
innovation and bring together multiple approaches to the same problem.
Currently
DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Project Agency) is running a Robotics Challenge (DRC)
for researchers. The
competition recently held a semi-finalist round in south Florida where 17 teams
from around the world competed. The top eight competitors received funding to
continue to prepare for the final competition in December. The 25 member
Florida based IHMC (Institute for Human Machine Cognition)
placed second overall and first among the teams that elected to use the Atlas
robot as a platform. The DRC design challenge is focused on developing robots
capable of assisting humans in responding to natural and man-made disasters and
meant to be extremely challenging. The first phase teams guided
their robots through eight individual, physical tasks that tested mobility, manipulation,
dexterity, perception, and operator control mechanisms. The 2015 final will involve a set
sequence of tasks and de-graded communications between the operators and the
robots. We might say that DARPA is focusing research teams to “push the same
envelope” with these competitions.
The
moral of the story is that robots are not just toys for the young, but
important parts of our evolving
society now infiltrating our daily lives. Students
who get interested in robotics can apply their interest to a large number of
applications and find themselves employed in applied technologies, or
manufacturing. There are related high wage and high skill technical jobs at
many levels requiring technical degrees, associate and/or bachelor degrees. For
those students who love student competitions, they might be able to continue to
compete at these higher levels.
FLATE is
proud to partner with IHMC, Ocala to offer summer robotics camps for students in
that area. Campers also compete in four different challenges during the week-long
camps. They too are driving innovation and “pushing their own envelopes” to
make their Lego® based bots do the impossible. At the same time, students
are building strong foundations for many life skills including creativity,
teamwork, decision-making, and perseverance and troubleshooting skills.
Continuing
on this path, I encourage you to read more about our upcoming summer robotics
camps for students and workshops for educators in this issue of the FLATE Focus. This being a special
robotics edition, we also highlight our involvement in national robotics week that
FLATE is hosting, and our extended Spring robotics outreach initiatives to
local schools and students. We hope you enjoy the stories. As always send us
your comments, questions and thoughts at news@fl-ate.org.
Also check your answers to last month’s sTEm puzzle AND if you haven’t already,
connect with us on LinkedIn!
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