Boots on the Ground

The view from Discord looks a lot different!

Week 8 started off with a solid click. That click was the lab door being opened by our software team, spending their first day of the 2021 season in the lab, on site.

What a glorious day!

What Is This Place?

Considering how long it had been since students had last been in the lab, the first thing was pretty much a refresh of what we had and what was where! (Which light switch does what again?)

Deadeye, hanging out in what may eventually be our at-home challenge area.

(Also sidebar: the last time someone was in the lab was actually in the fall - our lead mentor helped cut out stencils for painting signage for social distancing and other COVID procedures. For the students though, its been 51 weeks since their last visit to the lab. At the time I'm writing this, we were in West Valley last year. My office just celebrated it's 1 year Working From Home anniversary. It's been a really long year... I digress.)

Software was first in the building for a very specific reason: they asked first. Also, they were prepared, and had an action plan of what they wanted to do and how long it would take. I think mechanical was taken by surprise to learn that this was actually happening!

It had been a long while since Deadeye had been fired up and run, and the software team had been making updates all summer, fall, and winter. After the necessary protocols for check-in and building access, they cleaned up some of their working area, started downloading code, and spent the rest of the planned time resolving bugs and testing individual robot features. A CAN issue stopped them running the whole bot, but that was eventually remedied later in the week.

For all the team members - students and mentors - the opportunity of working in the lab is completely optional. And of course, new procedures and protocols were in place that if not followed, could revoke student's (or the team's!) access to the lab. Fortunately in this first week, everyone who attended the lab took their responsibilities seriously. We got a lot of good work done, safely. For those staying at home, (Hello! I'm waving... you probably can't see it though...) the folks in the lab would try to set up a Discord video to watch and be somewhat connected. At the end of every day, we started getting a few picture dumps in Slack.

What Is That Noise!

Tuesday, the mechanical team got their first time in the lab. On site. Wooooo!

The router is one of our key machines, so we got it up and running quickly!

Similar to software, where the robot hadn't run in a while, the tools and machines had been silent for the better part of a year. Alongside machine maintenance and testing, students took stock of parts and materials. We wanted a new robot, we had a BOM, but no idea what was actually in the lab! As machines started spinning, we also had to take stock of the endmills and router bits.

Fortunately for us, we had all the material for building two robots last year, and at the time of the shutdown had completed only one - we had a lot of material left over! One complete order would have the rest of the parts needed for Dead on Arr-eye-val in by Saturday. 

We've now got the time and talent to build this robot.

We are in business.

Random Musing of the Week

Also this week we submitted the materials for Game Design, Innovation, and Judged Robot Awards.

I was hanging out with the Innovation team Tuesday (hanging out = Discord) as they gave their submission the final review and submitted nice and early - before the portal started giving folks problems. As the night wound down and some folks started dropping off, one of the students asked a question that made me happy to be around -

(This is all paraphrase, I definitely don't have anywhere near perfect recall. It's really quite bad recall to be honest. This could be a completely made up story for all I know. Maybe a dream...)

Student - "Hey, I have a question, its not FIRST related, but a question about college and stuff"

I love this stuff. I love when kids ask college stuff. I love when kids ask life stuff! I already went through some stuff, so I know stuff!

Student - "My advisor says I should take multi-variable calculus to help stand out in my college applications - but it seems really intimidating."

Ok, I can't help with this stuff, I didn't take multi-variable calculus in high school or college. Lets dig a bit deeper.

Me - "Well, I can't tell you anything specific about multi-variable calculus, but, what majors are you looking at - would they require or benefit from taking it?"

Student - "I'm really interested in machine learning and artificial intelligence! I took a few courses and lessons, learned a lot, and it was super interesting!"

Woah. Let's rewind: student takes course on machine learning and artificial intelligence, is scared of multi-variable calculus.

Me - "Are you intimidated by artificial intelligence and machine learning?"

Student - "I mean I was at first, but after going through some of it I started to learn and understand, and its really cool!"

That makes a lot of sense, and fortunately for me, the student has figured out my next question before I even got a chance to ask it!"

Student - "I guess multi-variable calculus would be the same, once I get into it and start learning, maybe it won't be so bad."

Presto. I feel like a wizard. But for me, while this story was both meaningful and a lot of fun (the actual conversation was a lot longer and among more people), another comment from a different student really stuck in my head - 

Other Student - "Yeah, AI is really cool! I took a Coursera that walked us through a Convolutional Neural Network to recognize hand gestures using Tensorflow!"

How unbelievably cool is that! I'm impressed. I'm impressed in my student who sought out such a course and completed it. I'm also impressed by the adults. The professionals, the engineers, that were able to distill a complex process and tool, and make it usable and understandable. It may be akin to a CAD course, or a Java course, but the lesson for me, to all mentors and adults, and for the students to remember as they develop and grow - 

Teach!

You don't have to be a career teacher to teach. If you build something, or learn about something, you can always teach it, and grow and develop those to whom you teach.

Never stop learning, and never stop teaching.

First cut parts of 2021!

Have one more gratuitous photo of the first parts we cut for 2021 - intake bits.

-B