CLEVELAND — At the Wolstein Center, dozens of teams are gearing up for Ohio’s First Robotics Competition Buckeye Regional where 12 of those teams got to work with experts from the Great Lakes Science Center and NASA.
The cool thing about robots, you can build them to do whatever you want. So NASA and the Great Lakes Science Center are sponsoring and mentoring a dozen high school robotics teams to get them hooked on STEM.
“I think it's tremendous that the robots are really just an avenue for the kids to really build teamwork, learn to build their skills and really realize their potential,” said Stephen Helland, NASA Associate Director for a wind tunnel management group.
The teams have six weeks to design, build and program their robot; they then bring it to the competition where it must be able to do simple tasks like picking and placing objects.
Though sometimes they succeed and other times they fail, the program gives students like Julien Medina, whose dream is to work for NASA, a path he can take to make his dreams a reality.
“It's a lot of real-world deadlines and you get more experienced doing it. Like now I realized that engineering is kind of cool,” Julien said.
The program also inspires women like Victoria Tellez; she fell in love with computer science in her junior year. As she learned more about it, she immediately noticed there weren't too many women in the field, which motivated her even more.
“As a woman that's Hispanic, it's really a big deal, especially with computer science,” Victoria said.
Helland says it's clear these students are the future.
“There's a real shortage for us and technical need to bring them so they're going to be the next engineers, technicians, scientists and researchers,” he said.
The best part is, it's right here in Cleveland
“These are Cleveland schools. These are students coming from our school systems. Great potential,” Helland said.
The competition starts Friday and the top teams will earn a spot to compete in the international championships in April.
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