High School Team Robotics

Meet the high school sport that builds robots – and the next generation of engineers.

Over the last few years, team robotics has evolved from a fascinating after-school activity to an impactful force in the engineering world. Some 3,300 high school and community teams around the globe build robots each year to participate in the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition. This giant non-profit/sport league started in 1989 as a local program to inspire New Hampshire teens in tech fields, and has grown to encompass more than 83,000 high schoolers in 31 countries. This story covers teams in the San Francisco Bay Area throughout the 2023 season.

Through the fall, students meet outside the school day to develop skills in areas like component milling, gear ratios, computer-aided design and Java coding as tools for problem-solving and gamesmanship. Local engineering and IT professionals volunteer as mentors.

In January, FIRST reveals the season’s rules, kicking off a feverish eight weeks of designing, fabricating and programming fresh machines. Depending on goals and expectations, students may spend from a few hours to a few dozen hours a week. Then it’s on to three-day regional tournaments that serve as qualifiers for April’s world FIRST Championship in Houston.

The tournaments are a whirring, banging combination of science fair, Pac-Man, and March Madness played by demon-possessed lawnmowers. Robots compete in alliances of 3-vs-3 on a volleyball court-sized playing area in two-and-half minute matches. 2023’s season-specific tasks involved gathering up yellow traffic cones and inflatable purple cubes to deposit on poles or in slots at either end. Each match starts with fifteen seconds of autonomous action, when robots are programmed to score points on their own. Then, behind a plexi-glass shield, the humans step up to control their mechanical avatars, and it’s on – speed, power, grace, defense, teamwork, showboating and the occasional collision with bits of plastic and metal flying around. Yes, those safety glasses are necessary.

Demand for workers in automation and connectivity makes multiple years of hands-on high school robotics increasingly desirable in corporate America, with companies like Boeing, Apple and Ford signed up as FIRST sponsors. And colleges are also taking note — for example, Syracuse earmarks 10 scholarships for FIRST alums, while Worcester Polytechnic Institute now adds a custom Common App question about team robotics experience.

In addition to on-field triumph, teams vie for more than 20 other awards in categories from Rookie All Star to Gracious Professionalism. The prestige prizes are the blue gym banners that tournament victors and major community award winners can hang in their workshops. But anybody can take home that warm glow of satisfaction when, in the midst of a big competition, one of their peers walks by, nods and says, “Cool robot.”

Artist Bios

Mark Leong

Mark Leong is a fifth-generation Chinese-American from Sunnyvale, California. After graduating from Harvard in 1988 with a degree in Visual and Environmental Studies, he received a Gardner Fellowship to photograph the following year in China. In 1992, he was in residency at the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing, sponsored by the Lila Wallace Foundation. Beijing became his long-term base in 1997, from which he photographed throughout Asia. In 2003, he joined Redux Pictures. His book China Obscura was published in 2004.

He is a contributing photographer for National Geographic, and his stories have appeared in Time, Fortune, the New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, and Smithsonian. Honors include the National Endowment for the Arts, Fifty Crows, the Overseas Press Club, and the Open Society Foundation. In 2010, he was named the Wildlife Photojournalist of the Year for his coverage of the Asian wildlife trade. Shows include Carpenter Visual Arts Center, San Francisco Arts Commission, Leica Gallery Frankfurt, China National Museum, and Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture Shenzhen.

After more than two decades in China, he returned to the San Francisco Bay Area where he now lives.

Organizations

The Hudson Yards Hell’s Kitchen Alliance
Photoville

Founded in 2011 in Brooklyn, NY, Photoville was built on the principles of addressing cultural equity and inclusion, which we are always striving for, by ensuring that the artists we exhibit are diverse in gender, class, and race.

In pursuit of its mission, Photoville produces an annual, city-wide open air photography festival in New York City, a wide range of free educational community initiatives, and a nationwide program of public art exhibitions.

By activating public spaces, amplifying visual storytellers, and creating unique and highly innovative exhibition and programming environments, we join the cause of nurturing a new lens of representation.

Through creative partnerships with festivals, city agencies, and other nonprofit organizations, Photoville offers visual storytellers, educators, and students financial support, mentorship, and promotional & production resources, on a range of exhibition opportunities.

For more information about Photoville visit, www.photoville.com
NYC Parks

NYC Parks is the steward of more than 30,000 acres of land — 14 percent of New York City — including more than 5,000 individual properties ranging from Coney Island Beach and Central Park to community gardens and Greenstreets. We operate more than 800 athletic fields and nearly 1,000 playgrounds, 1,800 basketball courts, 550 tennis courts, 65 public pools, 51 recreational facilities, 15 nature centers, 14 golf courses, and 14 miles of beaches. We care for 1,200 monuments and 23 historic house museums. We look after 600,000 street trees, and two million more in parks. We are New York City’s principal providers of recreational and athletic facilities and programs. We are home to free concerts, world-class sports events, and cultural festivals.