“Johnson is our name, cheering is our game!” The chants of a cheerleading squad echoed faintly inside Colin Denis’s classroom one winter afternoon at John A. Johnson High School in St. Paul’s inner-city Payne-Phalen neighborhood. Denis, looking the very epitome of a high-school science teacher with his wispy hair, thick glasses, and lab coat, collected papers from two lingering students. “OK,” Denis told them, “now I’ll take you down to see the robot.” The girls giggled with excitement.
On that afternoon in early February, the robot was sprawled, as yet unnamed and entirely immobile, on a table in the school’s basement woodshop. The robot consisted of a square metal chassis measuring about two feet per side. Casters on each corner kept the robot stable, while four wheels near the center of the chassis were powered by a battery just a bit smaller than one you’d find under the hood of a minivan. There were plans for the robot to acquire arms and other useful accoutrements, but that day—with just two weeks remaining before the completion deadline—its creators were still grappling with more fundamental design challenges. “It’s my plan to drive it around the lunch room,” said Denis, “but we can’t really control it yet. It could hurt someone.”
Later this month, the fully mobile—and, it’s hoped, fully controllable—robot will join more than fifty others at an Upper Midwest regional event, competing with other robots to push balls around a track. If things go well, Johnson High’s robot could move on to the national FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition. The nonprofit FIRST, founded in 1989 by Dean Kamen, the inventor best known for his Segway Personal Transporter, aims to inspire students to enter science and technology fields.
Corporate grants pay for each team to receive a basic kit of components for a remote-controlled robot—but it’s nothing like a Snaptite model. It took weeks of work for several Johnson students to design and cut specialized aluminum parts, wire a remote-control device with two joysticks, and program the robot’s simple brain to respond to commands by spinning its wheels in the desired direction. “It’s been exciting,” said Mano Nhul, a spiky-haired senior wearing a necktie only semi-ironically. “Well, at least since we got the robot to move.”
The FIRST program has grown quickly in recent years, so most of the teams competing at the upcoming regional competition—to be held at the University of Minnesota the last weekend in March—are first-timers. Many, including the Johnson High team, have had to reconcile themselves to the fact that they’ll be up against experienced teams with vastly more resources. “We’re trying to do metal work in a woodshop,” observed Walter Pearson, a retired 3M engineer who serves as a volunteer advisor for the team. Bob Hart, an IBM retiree who’s another volunteer, added, “In engineering, you’re supposed to determine your need and design a part to do the job. Here, we have to do it backwards—find a part and then make it fit.”
But the Johnson students are quick studies. On that February afternoon, Hart was teaching senior Belik Pha how to use engineering software to design a cover plate for the robot. (Pearson was also able to arrange for some custom parts to be built at the 3M machine shop.) At the next terminal, Pha’s teammate Lao Vang was writing a program in the computer language C. “He’s had to learn C from scratch,” noted Denis. “That’s like telling someone to learn Urdu in two weeks.”
In the woodshop, senior Jeremy Gould was working with Pearson to cut a part to size. “This aluminum is like butter,” Pearson muttered approvingly as Gould sawed away. Gould, a burly young man with an unflappable, plainspoken demeanor, is all too familiar with the competition his team faces: He attended the two statewide events that inaugurated this season’s competition. There, experienced teams from places like Edina and Prior Lake showed up with dozens of members in matching shirts, reminiscing fondly about chanting their team numbers in Roman numerals and raising funds by auctioning dates with team members. At one event, veterans from the Edina team told new participants that they should plan to raise several thousand dollars (“at an absolute minimum”) to fund expenses like extra parts for their robot—each team is allowed to spend up to $3,500 on parts beyond those in the basic kit, and some teams go so far as to build two robots so they have one to practice with. The nine-member Johnson High team hadn’t had time to hold any fundraisers, write chants, or print T-shirts—let alone set up a website with a news feed on their progress, as many teams have—but Gould, who made bumpers for the robot by cutting up flotation noodles, was proud nonetheless. “We can get something together,” he said with confidence. “We’ll show them that we can compete.”
Denis was pleased that the robotics program had engaged some of Johnson’s more academically accomplished students; he had been inspired to support the founding of the team after colleagues at other schools teased him that Johnson students had a reputation for excellence in brawn rather than brain. “Belik has already completed her graduation requirements, and she’s taking classes at the U of M. Why should she stick around here at all? This gives kids like her something to come here for.”
Most of this year’s team members are seniors, but Denis and his colleagues are already making plans for next year, when the team will be based at St. Paul College’s fully equipped metal shop. As for what’s to come in ’08, Gould was asked for his thoughts as he stoically extracted a screw (Pearson had advised him to re-insert it from the opposite direction). “It’ll be interesting,” he said.
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