Robotics involves hours of building: not only machines and robots, but also passion, joy, cooperation and future dreams, too. Fueled by inspiration from advanced builders and the sense of accomplishment of building a final product as a team, Iolani middle school students in First Tech Challenge (FTC) Iobotics — the robotics team — enjoy building, programming and diligently preparing their robots for competitions by cooperating with peers that equally enjoy robotics.
FTC Iobotics has been a robust team in the FTC, a robotics league for grades 7-12, mainly middle schoolers. Namely, they won the Innovate Award last year, which is awarded to the most creative or inventive robot design solution for a task. There are two groups within the bigger team—Team 8741 and Team 8898 that each work on and compete with a robot.
In the FTC League, teams are given different challenges every year. This year, the challenge is to shoot artifacts, or light balls, into boxes using robots to score. Preparation requires diverse steps, such as brainstorming, programming, prototyping and repeating trial and error. Students are assigned different roles such as programming, controlling and building depending on their skill sets and preferences, all leading up to a final, functional robot by the competition. Students spend two hours a day, three times a week just in practices alone in addition to the time in competitions throughout the season, making it a significant time commitment.
Despite such major commitment and the challenges in robotics, students often initially join robotics inspired by advanced builders. When asked about her initial motivation, Jennessa L. ’30, who joined robotics in sixth grade, said, “I’ve watched robotics at FRC [FIRST Robotics Competition, a bigger-scale, more advanced high school league] before, so it looked cool and I wanted to do it.” Issey B. ’30, who also joined robotics in sixth grade at Le Jardin, stated, “I just liked [doing] robotics and building stuff. I liked watching a YouTuber Mark Rober, and he built stuff a lot. That inspired me.”
In addition to individual passions, their teamwork and synergy is also noticeable. Given the multiple steps and mastery required for each, students cooperate to make their final product. Jennessa stated, “Robotics has taught me to listen to others and to work together. At the end of the season, I feel like we bonded really closely and understood each other a lot.” To the question of what makes robotics enjoyable, she said, “It’s fun to do robotics, and then you also have a team of people who are willing to be there for you.”
Iobotics continues to be motivated, aiming for the same award they received last year. Meanwhile, individually, some dream to continue robotics in the future, and others cherish the skills learned from it. Jannessa mentioned the team has taught her not only engineering skills, but also teamwork and generally fostered her interest in STEM. When asked whether he would continue robotics, Issey confirmed, saying “I like doing robotics,” with his reason being: “I enjoy robotics and the feeling when you win is nice. It’s the same reason you would join any sport.” He is considering joining the FRC, the league for high schoolers. Both students, having started with the FLL, FIRST LEGO League for grades 4-8, are currently in FTC — a bigger league with a bigger team and more techniques. Now, they are interested in taking their next steps, even more advanced.
But the core often is not how fancy the robot is, but how much inspiration it stirs up within the team; as Issey put it, “[how] this [robot] is something that everybody worked together for and being able to see it move is a really good feeling.”