Robotics challenge kicks off Saturday with many Tulsa-area schools participating

“Recycle Rush is a game in which robots have to pick up totes which are just collapsible bins, stack them, place a recycle bin that looks like a trash can on top of that and then place what’s essentially a pool noodle inside as litter,” Memorial senior Patrick VanDusen said.

VanDusen and his brother Michael, a sophomore, are aspiring engineers who took part in last year’s FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition.

“We got far enough to where we ended up going to worlds, and only 400 (teams) are allowed there,” Patrick VanDusen said.

This year’s competition is different in a major way: Competition coordinators sent each of the 45 teams in the state an updated and more streamlined kit of parts, including motors, batteries, control system and components.

“It’s a refined version of the older stuff,” Memorial senior Jessica Meloy said while waiting for fellow team members to finish brainstorming. “It might not be the competition itself that’s the hardest ... it’s going to be how to figure out implementing what we already have. We design the mechanism, but once we’ve got that we have to refine it and apply (contest) rules to it.”

Memorial robotics alumna Bridget Taylor, who will graduate from the University of Oklahoma in May with an engineering degree, is helping mentor the high school students and said learning how to operate the new kit would be an additional challenge. The group qualified for the world competition the past two years after winning an engineering inspiration award, which means the students helped others in the Tulsa area become interested in science, technology, engineering and mathematics — or STEM — careers and hobbies.

“You can sit in a classroom and listen to a teacher who’s older than you and that’s not cool,” Taylor said. “But (younger) kids think ‘Oh I hung out with a high schooler and I’m only in third grade’ and it’s cool for them. Learning basic skills will help them in not only engineering, but other STEM fields and even for technical degrees.”

Meloy agreed, saying being mentored by older students helped her decide she wanted to become an engineer.

“I knew from sixth grade I was going to come here (to Memorial) and be on the robotics team because it was fun and the high schoolers were fun to hang out with,” she said. “It’s not a job. It’s something fun to do.”