Lowell Highs elite robotics team is racing to finish its robot. Can they make it to a high-stakes competition? – San Francisco Chronicle

The half dozen teenagers surround the small robot named Sparrow, their hands immersed in an array of metal, wires and computer components as they wield wire strippers, screwdrivers and zip ties with looks of utter concentration.

They have about 24 hours to make sure Sparrow can gather supersize tennis balls off the floor and shoot them 8 feet in the air before demonstrating it can lift itself off the floor to hang from a metal rod and then, like a kid on monkey bars, swing to another higher up.

Sparrow is currently not moving. Its a cam problem, one student says, motioning to a wire gripped between his fingers as he explains in technical language what that means.

For the first time in two years, these Lowell High School students in San Francisco will face off in person against students from across California and other countries in the Silicon Valley Regional First Robotics Competition Saturday and Sunday.

It is, according to organizers, a varsity sport for the mind, combining the excitement of sport with the rigors of science and technology.

The program is one of countless efforts started in the past two decades to lure young people into the fields needed for the 21st century economy. STEM science, technology, engineering and math became educations battle cry, with policymakers and corporate America pouring money into K-12 recruitment efforts.

To some degree, the investment is working.

For many of the Lowell Robotics Club members and thousands like them across the Bay Area and the U.S., building a robot and being on the robotics team can be frustrating, fun and challenging. It can also have a major influence on who they become as adults, many opting as a result for STEM college majors and careers.

For companies looking to attract future technology and science workers, encouraging kids to build a prize-winning robot is arguably among the best baits. And for those hoping to create a generation of problem-solving adults undeterred by setbacks, a stubborn robot with a cam issue will likely do the trick as well.

Lowell robotics coach Bryan Cooley, a physics teacher, points to former club members now working at Space X and Tesla, among other high-tech places.

He also notes building the robot is only part of the experience. Students have to give presentations, raise money and participate in community events demonstrating the robot, as well as in public relations efforts.

A year of teaching physics cant do that, Cooley says.

In the hallway of Lowells science building, the robotics team members alternate between being nervous, worried and confident.

I really feel this is one of the best robots weve ever built, says Ivy Mahncke, a junior and co-president of the schools robotics club.

That said, were in Silicon Valley, she said, adding they face the best teams, which are mentored by NASA and tech company engineers. Were an underdog.

A previous design of Sparrows climbing mechanisms was scrapped because it wasnt cool enough, so they redesigned it, says sophomore Lucas Rosenthal-Jones. Is it cool enough now?

If it works it is, he says.

This group, like hundreds of high school robotics teams across the country, has been getting ready for competition for months, designing, building and testing their robot after school until 9 p.m. most nights and on weekends. In between they sleep, eat, attend classes and do homework which is sometimes turned in late because Sparrow is stubborn.

The goal is to get to the national championship, held later this month in Houston. The Lowell team has been five times in a dozen years and believes Sparrow has the wings to get there in 2022.

Many of the robotics club students at Lowell, a historically rigorous and competitive academic high school, said they plan to pursue a STEM major in college, including various engineering fields, medicine or economics.

Cole Lewis of Lowell High Schools robotics club joins fellow team members on April 6 as they prepare the teams competition robot Sparrow for its next competition.

The recruitment effort has worked to a degree, but gaps remain in terms of demand and supply, said Susan Hackwood, executive director of the California Council on Science and Technology.

Silicon Valley and the rest of California continue to import top talent to fill jobs in science and technology fields. And the need remains to recruit women and people of color into STEM fields, experts said.

Theres still a huge, huge, huge access and opportunity gap into robotics, to STEM, said Lisa Andrews, president and CEO of the Silicon Valley Education Foundation, which works to increase that kind of access.

It needs to start with programs like clubs and competitions, where Black and brown students remain relatively rare, she said, including at Lowell.

Hackwood said she believes the pandemic could help reframe STEM education toward social justice and other emerging needs, potentially exciting a broader range of students. She already sees that trend among her own science and technology college students.

Students are no longer saying, How am I going to get a high paying job? said Hackwood, an electrical engineer professor. I have an enormous number of students using STEM knowledge to help policymakers make the right decisions.

At the same time, Amit Roy Chowdhury, a robotics professor at UC Riverside, said recruiting students into STEM isnt necessarily the problem. Its keeping them there.

Robotics and other STEM departments lose 50% of students admitted to these majors due to early courses in high-level math and computer programming required for a degree.

What robotics clubs generate is an interest in knowing more about these subjects, Chowdhury said. They do not convey the challenges students will face if they want to be a roboticist.

Back in the hallway at Lowell, the students are still focused on how to get Sparrow working.

They fret that so many things could go wrong with their robot. Parts break and humans are fallible. There was one year during a competition, they said, when someone forgot to plug the joysticks into the computer, leaving their robot motionless on the competition floor for a solid 90 seconds before they figured it out.

Everything that could go wrong goes wrong and then you fix it, Rosenthal-Jones says, shrugging. You can use robotics as a metaphor for life.

Jill Tucker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jtucker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jilltucker

Read the original here:

Lowell Highs elite robotics team is racing to finish its robot. Can they make it to a high-stakes competition? - San Francisco Chronicle