By Gavin O’Malley
Special to The Tribune
The team listens to the presentation of the game design and its subsequent rules.
Despite all that has happened this past year, one thing remains consistent: build season is underway for to San Marino High School’s Titanium Robotics team.
Every year, FIRST — the governing body of high school robotics competitions and whose acronym means “For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology” — puts out a challenge with a specific theme in mind. This year, one of the challenges is the FIRST Innovation Challenge.
The objective is to identify and develop a solution for a societal issue that relates to the pursuit of mental and physical health through active movement. This is a wide-ranging challenge, and FIRST Robotics teams are encouraged to take it any direction they’d like — after all, innovation is the goal.
“I am beyond excited to participate in this challenge,” business president Marcus Chia said. “One unique aspect of the event is that it will require our business and engineering teams to directly collaborate, a phenomenon that has not occurred to such a significant scale in previous years. I think that more than anything, the innovation challenge is extremely valuable in the sense that it allows us to directly apply our STEM skills to real-life problems and work towards building a tangible product that can directly benefit society.”
The parameters are wide to allow for numerous ideas. For example, the manual states that the judges must be shown the final concept; however, the manner in which it is shown is entirely at the team’s discretion — it can be two-dimensional or three-dimensional, physical or virtual. An example of a past concept is a “sport court” designed with embedded LED lights, allowing it to change its borders and lines at the press of a button. This allows for access to a wide variety of athletics, especially in a smaller space and in situations of smaller budgets.
The manner in which Titanium Robotics is approaching the challenge is still in early discussion stages, and there are several strong contenders. With the time allotted for the planning phase of the challenge, the team has begun to host biweekly meetings during which the members break into smaller groups of three to five. These teams then discuss ideas, plans, and begin fleshing out how to practically realize those plans. For the first time, the freshman class is participating in challenges without ever having stepped foot inside the robotics room. This promises to be a difficult undertaking because, with our freshmen having so little in-person experience, it is difficult to achieve fully equal contribution and conversation.
“Online robotics has definitely been different from how I imagine it would be like in school, but it was a good way to ease into the Titanium Robotics team,” freshman Maya Borkar said. “The team was so welcoming and inclusive to all of the new members and did a great job with outreach. We freshmen felt as if our voices were being heard equally while still being offered guidance by the senior members of the team. As for the Innovation Challenge, it was very open-ended which allowed the whole team to think about what problems people are facing in the real world which is what FIRST is all about.”
One major benefit of the online program is that mentors are able to sit in on every meeting they can, making guidance and experience a lot more accessible to rookie members as well as seasoned veterans.
Titanium Robotics is a team consisting of over 100 students, mainly from San Marino High School, who come together with a common interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Students learn from professional engineers and mentors to build and compete in the annual FIRST Robotics Challenge with a robot of their own design. Programming, electrical work, computer-aided design, and business management are all run by student representatives, making the entire organization student-led from start to finish.
