Fighting robots get teens’ gears turning, teach tech, engineering and math skills

In the name of education, robots with names like Dry Bones, Grimlock and Ironhide took to the steel and Plexiglas arena erected in the Olathe Northwest High School gym and slammed it out in a battle-to-the-finish competition.

At first glance it was all strength, agility and prowess, a Rock’em Sock’em clash. But at closer inspection, this was much more. It was a test of math, science and design smarts. Although a fast, durable bot and a quick-witted operator also played a role.

A key to victory: like any other cage match, stay out of the corners.

The event originated in the spring of 2015 when the Greater Kansas City Chapter of the National Tooling & Machining Association hosted a student robotics pilot project at the Olathe high school. It was such a success, with nearly 400 people in attendance, the association decided it would host the BotsKC competition every year. Saturday’s event — year two — brought out 10 teams, five of them from Olathe Northwest’s engineering department.

Students from the competing schools spend much of the academic year designing and building lightweight robots while learning skills in science, technology, engineering and math.

Each team was paired with professionals in the manufacturing industry, which sees the event as a way to grow the next generation of manufacturers.

“This is not your grandfather’s manufacturing industry,” said Torree Pederson, executive director of BotsKC. “We need a high-tech workforce, and companies are offering high-paying jobs to qualified candidates.”

Since the average age range for the workers currently in the industry is 55 to 60, National Tooling & Machining anticipates that the industry will see a tremendous number of vacancies as existing workers retire in the coming years, she said.

“Any student who likes to build, we want to get them engaged,” Pederson said. “Walk into any high school classroom and ask who wants to make things, and half the students will raise their hand. Ask who likes to break things — all of them will raise their hand. Fortunately, battle bots are fun.”

The bots looked a bit like those machines you might find roaming around a house vacuuming the carpet. But these little remote-controlled creatures are tough. Most could take a serious slamming and keep rolling.

That’s what Noah Imel, an 18-year-old Olathe Northwest senior, was hoping for as he and his four teammates tinkered with the 13-pound robot they named Ironhide. Four of the five Northwest teams in Saturday’s competition named their bots after Transformers of movie fame.

Imel, who expects to study mechanical engineering at Kansas State University in the fall, was on last year’s winning team and placed 11th at the national battle bot competition in Cleveland. Ironhide, with its spinning front weapon, was the bot to beat Saturday.

“It’s a lot of pressure and high expectation,” Imel said. “Our strategy is to hit the other bots low and flip them upside-down. The key is to have a wedged front, an effective weapon and you have to have a good escape plan.”

Inside the 15-by-15-foot metal-floored arena, Ironhide met its match — a hefty-looking, square-framed bot with an aluminum body and steel teeth made by a group of home-schooled robot lovers who call themselves Steel Eagles.

Bots get points in the arena for effective attacks, ability to move, defensibility, combat plan and students’ caution while handling the bot when entering and exiting the arena.

Judges inspect each robot before the competition begins and check for required safety mechanisms.

“We are looking for things that are not tied down properly,” said Bill Goodman, a judge from Bennett Tool & Die of Kansas City. “We want to guard against any instance of fire. We don’t want batteries exploding on us.”

Other teams competing were Bonner Springs High School, Four Rivers Career Center, Pittsburg State University, Clay-Platte Home Educators and Ruskin High School.

Win or lose, students said that besides having fun, “we learn a lot,” according to Ryan McIlvaine, a senior at Olathe Northwest who designed the frame and armor for Ironhide. “We learned time management and how to work in a small group where everyone has a responsibility.”

This story was originally published April 9, 2016 at 3:30 PM with the headline "Fighting robots get teens’ gears turning, teach tech, engineering and math skills."