High school students put their engineering skills to the test as 29 school robotics teams gathered at Humber Polytechnic for the FIRST Robotics Competition.
The For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) competition provides students with an opportunity to engage with Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) through hands-on experience building and designing robots.
FIRST Robotics supports experiential learning with the assistance of alumni, mentors, volunteers and teachers, allowing students to develop technical skills.
School robotics teams were given the theme and competition details two months in advance, with a strict deadline to design and program their robots.
With an archaeological theme as their inspiration, teams are encouraged to use tools and ideas from past competitions to "uncover the future."
The three-day tournament included qualification rounds, followed by elimination playoffs, where teams work with two alliance partners to complete challenges.
This year, alliances of three compete against their opponents in fast-paced matches lasting two-minute and 40-second matches on the course.
During the match, teams program their robots to collect fuel and launch the fuel into the hub to score points.
The competition focuses on completing challenges to achieve goals rather than simply clashing against opponents.
Teamwork and alliances are essential, as teams work together to improve their rankings.
The program manager of FIRST Robotics Competition, William Neal, says the cooperative nature of the event emphasizes collaboration over direct competition.
“It’s not just a robotics competition, it's not battle bots," he said. “It is a community built around making robots, and even more important than the competition is the co-operation. We are with a team alliance sometimes, and they’re on the opposite alliance sometimes, and we celebrate everyone's achievements."
Team rankings are evaluated at the end based on the number of qualification rounds each team has won.
In the elimination playoffs, top-ranked teams choose other teams to form alliances, working together to compete in the final rounds of the tournament.
Neal says students who participate in the competition benefit by gaining practical experience and important life skills.
“The key feature of the FIRST Robotics competition is this human development side, which is very difficult to find anywhere else in other areas of society,” he said.
Neal says education has become more focused on tests rather than hands-on learning.
“It's all exam-based, it has no meaning aside from your marks,” he said. “You need community connection, you need teamwork, you need a purpose that you know in your heart that you’re doing something to create the betterment of the world, and school on its own doesn't have it.”
Students on the robotics teams also have the chance to get hands-on marketing and outreach skills while competing for the FIRST Impact Award.
“The Impact Award is another part of this human development piece. Each team is encouraged to connect with the younger children in the community, to do service in their communities, and to share the story of what their teams [are] doing to uplift their entire community with STEM education,” Neal says.
Meghan Gandhi, a Grade 11 student from Runnymede Collegiate Institute and the communication and business lead who works to partner with local organizations for community outreach for Team 1310, said the team collaborates with local organizations in the York area to advocate for students to get equal hands-on opportunities to learn about STEM.
“What we do in the community is we run programs and work with different organizations such as Girl Guides, and Keys to Inclusion, which is a local group in our area, for adults with intellectual disabilities. We also run kids camps during the summer,” she said.
Gandhi says the Impact Award is an opportunity to foster relationships with organizations in the community to support STEM education.
“The Impact Award is an effort to show that FIRST is bigger than just robotics competitions," Gandhi said. “It really builds up a community, and FIRST encapsulates cooperation, communication, and working together and learning about STEM.”
The FIRST Impact Award is one of the four major awards in the competition.
Teams submit their work that tells the story of their community outreach, highlighting how they spread the mission and values of FIRST.
The three-day competition brought together more than 1,200 participants, showing how the FIRST community continues to inspire future innovators and problem-solvers.
