December 30, 2005

Girl Power

‘Globots’ gain international recognition in 2005

By Bea Baechle
Editor

The five Evergreen girls on the Globots robotics team can look back at 2005 with great pride.

Left to Right: Meera Ramakrishnan, Amritha Minisandram, Aarathi Minisandram, Neha Shekhar and Arthi Kumar

Their intelligence—combined with about five months of preparation and competitions, excellent coaching from their parents and a twist of fate—culminated in international recognition for the robot they designed and built.

The Globots registered their team in May and began their efforts in September 2004, when the First Lego League announced the theme of its competition. Robots had to be programmed to perform everyday tasks for people with disabilities.

The robots—which would be designed and built out of LEGO bricks and other elements such as light sensors, rotation sensors, and motors—had to complete nine missions in 2.5 minutes. For example, the robot had to place food on a dinner table, feed the pets, open a gate and climb some stairs.

The girls, ranging in age from 11 to 14 years at the time, attended three different schools—The Harker School, Chaboya Middle School and Challenger School—so research and practice time typically occurred on weekends when everyone was available.

Choosing a problem, solution
According to Jayanthi Minisandram, one of the parent coaches, the girls made a list of disabilities to research, divided into groups and presented an argument and solution for each disability. “The team for the visually impaired presented a stronger argument and we decided to go with this disability,” said Jayanthi.

“As part of their research, the Globots team went through the exercise of walking through all the day-to-day activities of handicapped citizens and identified bottlenecks where they might have difficulty assimilating into the normal stream of society,” explained Akila Kumar, another parent coach.

“Upon perusing the Web and connecting with children from the Illinois School for the Blind and a visually impaired product manager from Sun Microsys-tems, the children understood that shopping independently—without having to depend on another person  to help them through the process—was an important need for the visually impaired,” added Akila.

They then picked radio frequency identification, or RFID, as their research topic. RFID is a generic term for technologies that use radio waves to automatically identify people or objects. They presented their research in the form of a humorous yet informative skit that showed how technology can help the visually impaired.

“Working with preteens and teens made me realize that instead of me guiding them, they were guiding me on strategies and moves,” added Jayanthi. “They were able to plan their strategies better by anticipating their opponents’ moves and did a wonderful job of convincing the mentors and coaches on their moves.”

In fact, according to another parent coach, the girls made it very clear whose project this was. “Last year, the girls once thought we were pushing our viewpoints forcefully on them. They got upset and wrote a document called the “Robo-Declaration” signed by all the kids,” said Ramakrishnan Ramachandran, “The document mentioned that they wanted complete freedom from parent domination. Whenever we tried to impose our ideas, they reminded us of that document.”

Aarathi Minisandram, The Harker School, and Neha Shekhar, Chaboya Middle School, said they enjoyed programming more than building the robot.

“Programming is definitely more enjoyable, because programming is when we can see the robot in action,” said Aarathi, the eldest team member. “Building is just as important in robotics; in order for the program to work, a capable attachment to accomplish the missions is necessary.” 

“You use your brain to program the robot to do an infinite variety of actions; the possibilities are endless,” said Neha, the second eldest team member.

First place regional win
The Globots began competing at the regional First Lego League robotics tournament in Sacramento in November 2004, where they won a Director’s Award for best overall performance.

The Director’s Award is based on equal weighting of robot performance, teamwork, robot design and research presentation. As a rookie team called the Robomaniacs in 2003-04, they had already won a Director’s Award for a different design, and at the state level, had won second place in teamwork.

Drawing upon their recent regional win in Sacramento and past experience participating in the state tournament in 2004, the Globots entered the Northern California First Lego League Tournament with confidence.

“We tried our best, but the first round didn’t go to our satisfaction,” said Meera Ramakrishnan. “I felt really down, but I knew we had two more chances to run the robot. We discussed robot issues we observed in the first round with our coach and fixed them.”

According to Meera, her teammates Arthi Kumar and Amritha Minisandram ran the robot during the second round with more confidence, and the team received a better score. In the second part of the competition, the judges were impressed with the Globots’ simple yet elegant design, and in the teamwork and research portions, the judges seemed satisfied with the team’s answers to questions.

The Globots hold their 2003 and 2004 tropies: Top row (Left to Right): Arthi Kumar, Amritha Minisandram. Bottom row (Left to Right): Neha Shekhar, Aarathi Minisandram, Meera Ramakrishnan.

In the end, the Globots triumphed at the state tournament with a second place Director’s Award.

Twist of fate
Only the first place winners would move on to the international competition in Atlanta in April, so the Globots gladly accepted their second place award and were ready to wrap up another year of competition, when an unexpected opportunity arose.

The first place team declined the offer to compete in Atlanta, so the Globots were asked to represent Northern California in the FLL World Festival, an international competition, held at the Georgia Dome and Georgia World Congress Center, April 21 – 23.

Alongside another 74 other teams from around the world, the Globots competed in the research presentation, technical evaluation, teamwork and robot performance categories. They won the Judges Award, an award that gives the judges the freedom to recognize the most remarkable teams for which a standard award does not exist.

“One thing that we learned from this whole experience was how to work as a team,” said Aarathi. “Each one of us had our own beliefs and ideas that we had to compromise for the general good of the team.”

Amritha agreed that “Teamwork, overall, is the most important thing I learned.”

“The most important thing I learned was that you should give every possibility a chance—even if you think a solution to a problem won’t work, test it anyway,” concluded Neha.