Four copier-sized robots with fast moving arms guided by visual sensors whiz around a plexiglass-encased course, scooping up inflated balls and plastic traffic cones to drop in boxes and stack on poles in order to score points. With high school students at the helm, they navigate their custom-built machines from laptops and rely on automated coding to navigate both the course and the competing machines.
This is but one of many fast-paced robotics challenges that took place at Robonanza, an annual event returning for the first time since 2018 for local high school robotics teams hosted by Intuitive Foundation at Intuitive Surgical’s facilities in Sunnyvale, California.
Teams compete by building their own versions of the robots designed to adapt to new challenges at each competition; they source their own parts, write their own code, and work collaboratively to travel to competitions.
“We’re here to encourage their aspirations, to perhaps one day work here [at Intuitive] or contribute to other health or robotic projects,” said Luan Heimlich, senior regional director northern California for FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology). “It’s especially valuable for the girls and less-advantaged students to connect them to these kinds of careers and let them know their futures can be here [at Intuitive].”
Robonanza also connects Intuitive employees to the FIRST teams and their advisors—some team advisors are also Intuitive employees.
FIRST has built out a strong network of high school teams in the Bay Area, many that compete at national FIRST competitions. The challenge: getting the program into underserved high schools. “We’ve only got three teams in Oakland, and we have an opportunity there to really make a difference,” Heimlich said.
For 15-year-old Phoebe Tang, the robotics team Funky Monkeys at Lynnbrook High School in nearby Cupertino, California, “has become less of a club activity for me and more of a family,” she said, noting that she “fell in love” with the metalworking portion of the robotics team.
She’s since moved into the subsystems part of the competition and wants to steer the experience into a career that would involve robotics. “I’ve learned a lot more about how teams work together and succeed as well as the robotics,” she said. “It’s been great to travel to competitions and keep learning.”
The Intuitive Foundation awarded grants to 177 robotic teams in the US, Australia, and Mexico in the 2022-23 school year. This year’s applicants included teams from US, Mexico, Canada, Australia, and Turkey. To learn more, visit the Intuitive Foundation website.