Urban Search and Rescue Robotics: An Opportunity For Learning

This year I had the great honor to work to bring to the state of Iowa a new robotic competition for high school students. With the help of SkillsUSA and their marvelous team who were so dedicated to making sure this event happened we were able to launch a new robotic program for students in Iowa as part of the many great opportunities SkillsUSA provides.

You might be asking why another robotic competition? Don’t we already have FIRST, Vex, and many others? The answer is yes. However, as much as we have a ton of choices for students to explore STEM, something that I see missing in many high schools and educational institutions is the opportunity for ALL students. While there are some powerful and top notch programs out there, often times kids are left behind because the cost is too much, equipment needs cannot be met, there are not enough instructors, etc. Because of these all too real factors, not every kid can explore their interests.

What I really liked about USAR(Urban Search and Rescue) is that it can be done using parts that many schools already have, it does not require a huge amount of time(if you don’t want it to), and provides great learning opportunities for students.

This post is not designed to go into all details of the challenge as you can read that here, but essentially you have teams of two who build a robot using Tetrix or Vex or any parts that are legal to be able to capture two bricks that represent bombs much like the military. You have six minutes to retrieve them and place them in a bucket outside of the arena. You control your robot using a camera and controller, but the driver cannot face the arena. Your teammate can communicate with you as you work to locate the bricks. There are other aspects, but this is what students are aiming to achieve.

I had two teams this year. These were students who were looking for a challenge to push their thinking with robotics. They were not able to find something so we started the process to make this competition happen in Iowa.These four young men are outstanding and anytime I have a chance to work with them I feel blessed and honored. I have had many years to work with them when I had them in our FIRST LEGO League teams for the past 4 years so I understood that I was working with some of the brightest and best students I have ever worked with in my 15 years in education.

While this is not all about winning, but the learning that takes place I have to brag on them as they took 1st and 2nd place in the state competition. What is so impressive about this is the fact that we housed the arena and work area at my non-profit. Due to my schedule and their crazy schedule with sports, music, theater, and a host of other things we did not have much time. This is one of the perks to this challenge is that it does not take forever to prepare, but you can invest a ton of time if you wish to create an amazing robot. We worked on Sundays and during the week while I taught class. The boys worked on their own to problem solve. Eventually, we had to figure out another plan as I was traveling quite a bit so they took it upon themselves to work at home late at night and in free moments on the weekend.

In the end they developed a pretty impressive 3D printed gripper and some clever ways to navigate their robots. As always we followed the KISS method and time and time again this process works.

This video below explains the challenges, rubrics, the arena as well as our robot runs so you can see what it entails.

Additionally, these boys put together an engineering notebook(Example 1 and Example 2) to document their learning. This was all done on their own. This reminds us all that when students are engaged and invested in the learning it is simply amazing what can be accomplished.

I could not be more proud of our teams and the other teams that joined this year. I feel strongly that this is going to take off in Iowa. The kits are not that expensive. Many schools already have the parts. Even more important is that SkillsUSA has a ton of other competitions for kids to join. I am really shocked that we don’t have buses and buses of kids traveling to compete in these competitions. The amount of scholarships, prizes, tools, and opportunities that were provided to students at the event was amazing.

All in all I hope that we realize that as much as we have opportunities for students, we must continue to work for more. As we have programs for kids to be part of music and sports, do we have enough for STEM? If a kid wants to pursue more STEM outside of the school day, then is there an opportunity at your school? If not, then this might be something to consider. As I work for more equity in STEM to help make sure that all students have opportunities to explore fields of interest if necessary I realize that we are missing out on some key opportunities. It is an important question for us all to consider with our schools – Do we actually provide enough for ALL students be take an active role in their learning and curiosity in STEM? STEM does not solve all issues, but if we bend over backwards for music and sports opportunities, then shouldn’t we also do the same for other areas?

Working with these four young men I realized that this opportunity was one more step for them to explore what they might want to do in the future and how do we provide this opportunity for others?