Board member Tanya La Force and Imagine Their Future Virtual Tour attendee James Orsinger of Vienna TechHelp attended the DC Regional FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) on Friday, March 25. FRC was a three day event held at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in D.C..  James was a mentor to the James Madison High School Vienna Robotics Team 620 Warbots for five years and introduced us the the team.  "You've got to see this. It's amazing what these kids do," says James.

Mentor Terry Mella with Robot and Team 620

Referred to as the "varsity sport for the mind," FRC combines the excitement of sport with the challenges of science and technology.  Under strict rules, limited resources, and a six week time limit, teams of students are challenged to raise funds and design, build and program a robot to perform prescribed tasks to score points against a field of 63 competitors.  This year's challenge was to build a robot that could maneuver a crowded course, grab inner tubes and assemble the FIRST logo onto stationary 4', 6' or 9' high hooks within 2 minutes.  Extra points were awarded for successful autonomous modes and deploying "minibots" to climb a ten foot pole.

The competitors get real world engineering experience.  The Warbot team is made up of sixteen sub-teams, including electrical, mechanical, programing, public relations and marketing.  "The students really learn valuable lessons, like when the mechanical team makes a change and doesn't tell the electrical team! They learn the hard way sometimes," says Toss Cline, Technology Education teacher and mentor.

Volunteer professionals mentor each team by lending their time and talents.  Terry Mella of Xerox has been a mentor for 11 years and shares, "When we first started the team, we raised about $7,000, for eleven kids to compete and it was mostly donations from parents; now the almost 50 kids on the team are making presentations to corporations and with help from friends and families have raised $50,000.  Can you imagine?"

Yes, we can Imagine... the Children's Science Center is working towards building a center to make hands on learning experiences available to children throughout our region.  We need more volunteers like Terry and James helping us to make this project a reality!

Congratulations to the team for winning the "Gracious Professionalism Award" in D.C. and advancing to the next regional competition in Richmond.  Go Warbots and good luck in Richmond, and hopefully on to St. Louis!  Follow Team 620 at www.jmhsrobotics.org.  

Editor's Note: The Children's Science Center would like to highlight local activities and news related to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) in each issue of our newsletter.  We are calling this new section STAR (STEM Around the Region).  Send your news and pictures to us and we will select a STAR to highlight each month.