MISSOULA — “The engagement that we get from this is they learn so many tasks that are real world. These students are going to become on to be the leaders of tomorrow,” said Brian Boot, head coach for the Missoula Robotics Team.
The Missoula Robotics Team, comprised of high school students from across the Missoula area, unveiled their robot on Saturday in anticipation of their upcoming competitions in Salt Lake City and Boise. And they’re the only team in the state headed to these national events.
Part of the FIRST program — a worldwide organization that supports STEM education through building robots that complete various tasks — the Missoula Robotics Team is a student-run operation, with students from grade school through high school participating.
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“At the very beginning of the year, when we get all the new students, some of them come in with some general idea of what they're interested in. Some of them don’t,” said Missoula Robotics Team team manager Elizabeth Franzon.
Franzon told MTN there’s a lot that goes into getting their robot ready for competition, all managed by the students.
“There has to be quite a bit of order in how you're going. So it has to go CAD first. You can't do that after you've built the robot. So there's a lot of communication that has to happen between that,” explained Franzon.
“With a really short amount of time between our build season and our competition, we have to order a lot of our parts, and a lot of stuff has to be shipped. And a lot of it, it'll come later than previously expected. So actually this year, our swerves, the drive train, they didn't come in until later than we thought they would. And so, sometimes you kind of have to deal with that and make room for it,” continued Franzon.
While the students run the show, the team coaches, like Daniel Lande, assistant coach for the Missoula Robotics Team, do provide some guidance to the students.
“I head up the Electrical and Programming sub-team, so we're responsible for doing all the wiring of the robot, once build's done with it, and then writing all the code to get the robot to do the things it does,” said Lande.
The robot for this year’s competition is meant to challenge the students with an “underwater” scenario, picking up what would be coral and algae if it weren’t done on dry land.
“This year we have a big 14-inch playground ball that is one of the, that's what we call the algae, and then we have a PVC pipe that's four inches in diameter and about a foot long that's the coral. And so you have to make manipulators to pick up both of those things and be able to challenge, move that throughout the competition,” explained Boot.
Most importantly, the team provides unbeatable opportunities for the students.
“You get a lot of hands-on experience. I've had a lot of different internship opportunities and things that have come up because I have the experience. I can say I know how to do this, I'm certified in this, that kind of thing,” explained Franzon.
“But it also, you know, you come out with like a lot of really cool relationships with people. I've met people from all over the world. Some of my best friends right now are on a world-winning team in the Netherlands, and I'm going to go spend some time with them next year because like, you know, I have that connection from robotics now,” Franzon told MTN.
