IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2015 - 32

into a marketable product with the goal
TROBO owners can continue to build
of raising US$60,000 in a few months.
upon their story collections.
Kickstarter crowd-sources investing,
Harden and Scheinberg are looking to
investors pledge any amount of financial
make an impact on science, technology,
support, and no money passes hands
engineering, and mathematics (STEM)
unless the goal is met. It is nail-biting
education. As both parents and engineers,
for entrepreneurs who have put so much
they see the current issues in education. If
into their projects and now wait to see
there is a point between fourth and sixth
if their product will sink or swim with
grade where many kids are losing interest
the community.
in STEM, TROBO is a way to "inspire that
Harden and Scheinberg were looking
fundamental interest from a young age."
to raise enough money to support the
As Scheinberg says, "Obviously, there are
completion of TROBO's software, content
no guarantees that a two-year-old who is
development, product, and packaging
excited about science will grow up to be a
development. They began buildphysicist or electrical engineer, but
ing their crowd months in
then again, maybe they will.
If
advance and succeeded
If not, those critical thinkthere is a
in reaching a third
ing skills that they
point between fourth
of the goal in the
develop early on will
first day. After that
be beneficial regardand sixth grade where
came a lull, but
less of the career
many kids are losing
when TROBO cappath they choose."
interest in STEM, TROBO
tured a lead story
They may feel
is a way to "inspire that
on TechCrunch on
like they are just
the same day the
getting started, but
fundamental interest
iPhone 6 launched,
TROBO has many
from a young
the campaign pushed
supporters and people
age."
forward and they hit their
who are excited about what
goal in the final 30 minutes.
they are trying to do. TROBO
Harden and Scheinberg credit their
is currently working toward coming to
success to the passionate TROBO supmarket for the 2015 holiday season.
porters who helped spread the word.
You can learn more about TROBO by
Now, with their Kickstarter funds sevisiting www.herecomestrobo.com.
cured, the team sends their backers fre-Katianne Williams
quent updates on TROBO's progression
to market.

What's Next?
The team has partnered with a manufacturer that will help build the robots. Before they can begin rolling off the lines,
though, the company must continue developing stories and building additional
features on the existing application. This
includes creating additional story scripts,
characters, avatars, backgrounds, props,
clothes, puzzles, and animation. In the
meantime, TROBO must continue with
additional safety testing.
Beyond that, general infrastructure
development must continue so that the
application has a full array of menu
options, user settings, and support
for multiple devices. Additionally, the
team must develop a storefront so that

IEEE WOMEN IN ENGINEERING MAGAZINE

FIRST Things First
University partnerships bolster
VA-DC teams

Starting in November 2014, students all
over the world took on a shared challenge: to find a better or more innovative
way to help someone learn. It's a looking-in-the-mirror moment for the FIRST
LEGO League (FLL) program, which
sponsors an annual competition tasking
students to solve real-world engineering
challenges through a research project
and the creation, build, and program-

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MWIE.2015.2408715
Date of publication: 12 May 2015

JUNE 2015

ming of a functional robot. FIRST, which
stands for "For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology," provides
a hands-on way for students to "see that
science and math, subjects
taught in school, have
real-world application
to human problems,"
says Dr. Bob Kolvoord, dean of the
James Madison University (JMU) College
of Integrated Science
Dean Bob Kolvoord
and Engineering and
codirector of the JMU Center for STEM
Education and Outreach.
According to the program's Web
site, the 2014 FLL Challenge brought
together 265,000 students in 80 countries to tackle one theme, centered on
rethinking education. Students compete
within regions, the largest of which is
in the Virginia-Washington, D.C. (VADC), area, with a state championship
tournament hosted at nearby James
Madison University. The region's participation started in 1999 with a single
team and has grown to encompass over
600 teams, necessitating more than 25
regional tournaments that all took place
in November, leading up to December's
championship.
Karen Berger currently serves as
regional tournament coordinator, having joined the local program in 2001 as
a student volunteer. This, in effect, was
a "challenge" of its own. "I showed up
to a meeting, answering a flyer for volunteers and got somewhat insulted into
helping more," Berger recalls, laughing. "A woman who was giving volunteers setup instructions was looking for
strong boys to move some equipment
around and, when I offered, she said it
was too heavy for me. So then it became
something I had to do (and did). The
next year I volunteered to run setup, and
that woman ended up becoming something of a mentor to me."
In the years since, Berger has
watched the VA-DC league grow significantly, in part due to the way the region
organizes its teams. In Virginia, teams
are placed into divisions based on age,
which allows a younger team (ages 9-11)

http://www.herecomestrobo.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2015