IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2007 - 36

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The fall was not limited to learning,
building, and driving robots. They spent
time walking door to door on Commonwealth Avenue asking local vendors to
sponsor the team. With ambitions of
raising enough money to attend the
F.I.R.S.T. championship competition in
Atlanta, Georgia, they needed to raise
US$50,000. They also needed to design
the banners, T-shirts, and stickers that
would recognize those sponsors.
A large part of the F.I.R.S.T. experience is doing outreach to spread the
engineering message to students not on
the team. They went to the local middle
school once a week to mentor a LEGO
League Robotics team. Once a week they
produced a podcast with engineering
"Tips and Tricks for a Successful Robotics Season," which was posted on iTunes.
Sarah cowrote and delivered two professional development workshops for teachers from local Boston Schools. All of this
paled in comparison to the time commitment preceding the six-week winter
"build season."
The build season kicked off the first
Saturday in January. Over 1,000 teams
from around the world watched the live
broadcast of the announcement of this
year's game in Manchester, New Hampshire, via NASA television. This year, the
game consisted of picking up inflatable
swimming pool tires and placing them
on a tree-like PVC pipe structure. In the
120-second competition rounds, an
alliance of three randomly selected
robots would compete against an opposing triumvirate. Lifting your alliance
partner's robots at least 12 inches into
the air at the end of the round could
score additional points.
For six weeks, the girls gathered every
day to accomplish this task. They began

Michela
Meister uses
a drill press
to make a
part for the
robot.

Page 36

by debating a game
strategy and came
up with several
Madeline
designs and protoHickman and
Sam Roberts
types. They deciddrive the robot,
ed to build a robot
coached by
that would lift the
Mentor
Brandon
tires with an arm
Mensing
controlled by a (undergraduate
motor and a claw
at Boston
University).
controlled by a
pneumatic piston.
They ambitiously
decided to build a
six-foot-long lifting platform with four
large pneumatic pistons in the corners.
The 100-pound weight restriction caused
a change of material for the platform and
a change in design.
The last weekend, several local Boston
high schools set up camp at B.U. to get
help finishing their robots. Amy recalls
she was "trusted to show newer members
how to use tools and was able to help
them learn how to brainstorm, design,
and then build a final product." The girls
gleamed with confidence as they realized
how much they actually knew.
At the end of the build season, they
presented their robots to the public in a
joint press conference featuring several
Boston teams. Several of the girls were
featured on local television and radio stations. After that, the robot was placed
into a crate and a delivery truck took the
it to the competition.

Inspiring Performance
At the end of March, the team arrived at
the Boston Regional Competition. Mascots, pep bands, engineers, CEOs, and
the governor showed up to cheer on the
teams. The announcer for the Boston
Red Sox introduced the competitors.
Rock music shook the
auditorium as the girls
watched the robots compete and listened to the
play-by-play announcements of the rounds.
The true adrenaline
rush was in the maintenance pits. During the
first day, the robots
underwent a rigorous set

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE BOSTON UNIVERSITY ACADEMY

IEEE WOMEN IN ENGINEERING MAGAZINE

WINTER 2007/2008

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE BOSTON UNIVERSITY ACADEMY

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of safety inspections and were measured
for weight and size restrictions. The previous year, the robot was almost 30
pounds overweight, so they did not want
a repeat experience. The robot competed
in about a dozen rounds in the three
days. Maddie was the copilot this year,
controlling the robot's arms and lifter.
Coordinating the game play with two
other robots takes strategy and an ability
to quickly respond. But repairing the
robot after each round of play was almost
as much fun.
Although their robot did not make it
into the final rounds based on game play,
the team received an award just as gratifying. For all their outreach work during
the preceding months, the podcasts,
workshops, and mentoring of new teams,
they earned the Engineering Inspiration
Award, the second highest award one can
earn in a F.I.R.S.T. competition, which
qualified them to move on to compete in
the national competition.
In April, the girls boarded a plane for
Atlanta where more than 400 teams
gathered at the Georgia Dome. The energy was astonishing. The best teams in
the world gathered and showed off their
engineering prowess. After five days of
bonding on the road, the girls returned
to their studies in Boston. Many of the
students prepared to spend the summer
working in science and engineering laboratories. Diya was off to Harvard to study
genetics. Sarah designed satellites at B.U.
In their spare time, they made the final
repairs to prepare the robot for Battlecry.
The day in Worcester provided great
closure for an intense year. Maddie finally got to drive in the semifinal round of a

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2007