Robots FIRST

The FIRST National Championships were in St. Louis this year, and as a scholarship provider, Harvey Mudd was invited to attend and have a table on their scholarship row. As the only member of the admission staff not otherwise engaged in travel during this time, I was forced (forced!) to go.

This was really no great hardship. FIRST is an organization whose goal is to foster entrepreneurship and invention among elementary, middle, and high school-age students. The tools they use? Awesome robots.

A qualifying match begins...

There are several divisions in FIRST, for different age groups and for groups with differing amounts of resources. FRC, the FIRST Robotics Competition, tends to get most of the glory because their robots are person-sized. Each year, a new game is released for the robots to play. Here's a description of the game for this year, called LOGOMOTION. Check out the animation!

Being able to be at the national championships was a terrific experience for a number of reasons. Most obviously, the robots are pretty darn cool. The creativity that teams show in in figuring out how to address the game is amazing and inspiring. This year, teams even had a chance to build more than one robot -- check out that description for more information, but the basic gist is that teams could gain bonus points at the end of the game for having a mini-bot that could most quickly climb a tall pole on the playing field.

Gracious Professionalism -- helping your competitors as much as possible, while simultaneously attempting to kick their butts.

There are also corporate sponsors who bring cool things to show off. Honda demoed their Asimo! (here's a Youtube video of an Asimo demo on another occasion)

My favorite part, however, has to be all the students I had the opportunity to meet. FIRST is not like a typical college fair-type event. At most college fairs, there's a mix of students with different interests. Some are definitely into what we do, but many aren't as interested in engineering and science as they are in other things. Not so at FIRST. It's a robotics competition, so the vast majority of students there are enthusiastic about engineering and the sciences, and have a ton of questions about the particulars of what our programs are like.

Beyond their academic interests, the kinds of students who do FIRST are usually an awesome fit for our community as well. They wear silly hats.

Guess which state this team was from.

They make awesome costumes.

Isn't she a little short for a stormtrooper?

Best of all, they're fully engaged with the experience of working with their team to create the best product possible.

Also, they have great pants.

A fair number of FIRSTies agree with us about the fit. While at the competition, I ran into one of our current students who's helping to mentor a rookie team at a local high school.

Mudders take St. Louis!

That team did such an amazing job at their regional competition that they were able to come to nationals in their very first year doing FIRST. I like to think that their Mudder mentors had something to do with that.

This experience was capped off for me with the invited guest events on Friday night. Dean Kamen, the founder of FIRST, apparently networks like mad; during the dinner, he showed a "trailer" for FIRST featuring narration by Morgan Freeman. Who also attended the dinner. I died. After the dinner, we headed to a concert featuring the Black Eyed Peas and Willow Smith. Apparently will.i.am is a huge supporter of science and technology education, and is organizing a TV special about FIRST to raise awareness about the program. As he put it, "FIRST is already cool. I'm going to make it loud."

They did, in fact, make it loud.

As cool as a free Black Eyed Peas concert was, I have to say that I'm really more excited about the opportunities I had to talk to the competitors. I met some enthusiastic and engaged students who I would of course love to see apply to and attend Harvey Mudd, but will also be the people who lead innovation and invention in the next few decades. The person who cures Alzheimer's or invents fully-functional replacement organs might even have filled out one of my information cards! It doesn't get much more exciting than that.

Okay, except for Morgan Freeman. Morgan Freeman!