Multiple Naperville-based robotics teams are competing in Houston, Texas, this week in one of the largest robotics competitions in the world.
Two teams — Naperville District 203’s Huskie Robotics, Team 3061, and local nonprofit Roaring Robotics, Team 2704 — will compete in the robotics league for high schoolers at the FIRST World Championship. For the Huskie Robotics, it will be the fifth straight season it’s gone to the world championship. For the Roaring Robotics, it’s a first in more than a decade.
“The last three to four years have been a real turning point for the team,” said Brian Bellot, coach for the Roaring Robotics, noting that the team has worked on developing a “can-do attitude.” Twenty-seven students from 14 different school districts make up the team.
Founded in 1989, FIRST is an international organization that aims to inspire students to develop an interest in technology and engineering and prepare them for a career in those fields. FIRST runs a number of engineering competition leagues, including the FIRST Robotics Competition, which is the program in which both the Huskie Robotics and the Roaring Robotics compete. The FIRST Robotics Competition is one of the largest youth contests of its kind, with the championship bringing together about 600 teams from around the world.
One other Naperville-based robotics team, Team 19652 Techineers, will be competing in the FIRST World Championship via the FIRST Tech Challenge, which is a league open to middle and high school students, a representative from the FIRST organization said.
“The cool thing about FIRST is every single robot is different,” said Arnav Nagpal, a Naperville North High School senior on the Huskie team. “We’re going to world championships (with) over 600 robots and no one other robot is going to be just like our robot. And we’re not familiar with any other robots so it’s kind of cool to see how all these teams are (using) different engineering principles.”
At the beginning of the FIRST Robotics Competition season, FIRST unveils a new game in which teams from around the world compete. This year’s, REBUILT, challenged teams to design robots around a theme of innovation and rebuilding for the future. In matches, an alliance of three robots competes against another three-robot alliance to collect foam balls called fuel. Each team has to throw those balls into a basket called a “hub.” They can earn additional points by climbing a tower.
After the game for the season is revealed, teams have six to eight weeks to build a 115-pound robot before competing in regional events. In order to qualify for the world championship, each team must earn a certain number of competition points, win specific judged awards or achieve a qualifying combination of the two.
This year, both Naperville teams qualified through scoring enough points in regional competitions and winning the most prestigious award in the league: the Impact Award, which recognizes teams that not only excel in engineering but also give back to their community and inspire others to go into STEM.
The Huskie Robotics have won the Impact Award four times in the past six years. By contrast, this was the first time Roaring Robotics even competed for it.
“It was actually surreal,” said Nooriya Rahman, operations captain for the Roaring Robotics. “It didn’t feel like we really were going to get it because it was our first year applying.”
In the past three years, Roaring Robotics has committed to bolstering its program by bringing in more mentors from companies like Molex and helping other schools build their own robotics programs.
“We started FIRST teams in our community and that was kind of really what stepped it up,” Rahman, a junior at Wheaton Warrenville South High School, said.
That included St. Francis Catholic High School in Wheaton, where Rahman said they introduced 700 students to the world of FIRST robotics. Roaring Robotics has also attended more outreach events this past year, from hosting STEM fair nights to attending the technology convention “The ASSEMBLY Show” in Rosemont. The team’s efforts have allowed them to reach about 110,000 people.
After Roaring Robotics found out they won the Impact Award at the City of Fountains Regional Competition in Kansas City, Missouri, the team also learned they had enough points to qualify for the world championship.
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“We’re all kind of in shock, quite frankly,” Bellot said.
The Kansas City competition was a particularly tough schedule for the Roaring Robotics. Statistics showed that the group was only supposed to win one match out of the eight, but they ended up winning three, giving them the push they needed to qualify for the world championship.
For the Huskie Robotics, a similar story unfolded. The team competed at the Midwest Regional in Arlington Heights, where its robot did not go as far as the team had hoped. However, winning the Impact Award at the Midwest Regional gave them the needed boost.
“We’re very student-driven,” Nagpal said. “Each year we’re building on what previous students have done, whether that’s outreach, leadership or engineering.”
That outreach has included establishing a network of LEGO building teams across local elementary schools, helping to introduce younger students to engineering.
“Our mission is to ensure that every kid is able to grow up with STEM regardless of barriers they might have, and to kind of make them feel like it’s in the community and they belong in a STEM environment,” he said.
Currently, Huskie Robotics is working with U.S. Rep. Bill Foster, D-Naperville, and state Rep. Janet Yang Rohr and Sen. Laura Ellman, both Naperville Democrats, to turn FIRST programs in Illinois into career and technical student organizations, which would give schools with FIRST programs greater access to funding, resources and statewide support.
“Obviously, we are very blessed to have tons of amazing sponsors that allow us to attend the world championships, buy all these materials, create these big robots, but obviously they’re a little expensive,”said Jinan Parves, a Naperville Central senior on the Huskie team. “So in doing this we’re able to kind of close that bridge even more and allow even more people to have access to these STEM resources.”
As both teams head into the championship, different thoughts weigh heavily for them. For the Huskies, the championship represents an opportunity to learn from some of the best teams in the world. For the Roaring Robotics, the trip marks a milestone after years of team building.
“It means everything,” Rahman said. “We’ve put in so much time and effort this season, so being able to go to (the championship) as a full team is really special.”