Racing Robots: What Palo Alto High School Students Did This Summer

I was on assignment in Silicon Valley this summer when one of my stories fell through. I'd been approached by a startup that said it had something incredible lurking in the lab. But as the day approached, and I reiterated I'd need to see a live demo (i.e. try it out for myself), they got cold feet. Turns out it was more rough and R&D level than go-to-market shiny. The appointment was canceled.

So I found myself wandering down Emerson Street in Palo Alto, hoping one of my other contacts would come through, and that I'd find another story for the following afternoon before returning home to Los Angeles.

That's when, in a Harry Potter-esque magical moment, a group of teenagers walked towards me. They were wearing green T-shirts that read "Paly Robotics: making humans obsolete since 1996" on the front and a list of industry stalwarts sponsors —Google, Nvidia—on the back.

I stopped them, explained I was a journalist, and found out they were counselors at Paly Robotics' Summer Camp. I got the email address of their organizers and 24 hours later, was watching the fierce showdown between two of the robots they'd hacked together and programmed this summer.

Palo Alto High School's robotics team has a tradition of matching older high school students with younger ones. For two weeks in the summer, incoming sixth through ninth graders get a crash course in topics like programming in Python, design, marketing, engineering, and basic automation skills building. The camp runs over two sessions at a cost of $350 per camper (with financial aid available).

Before the showdown in Room 904, an old wrestling room, I stopped by the Paly Robotics Lab and sat down with: Lawrence, a junior build captain in charge of fabrication, construction, and electronics; Annie, a junior, business captain, and camp co-lead; and Shota, a recent grad and previous summer camp lead, who is now studying robotics in college.

Lawrence, kick us off by explaining what kind of gear you have here at Palo Alto High School in the Robotics Lab.
Lawrence: Sure. We're very fortunate to have some pretty high-class machines including a Tormach CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machine used to make custom gearboxes, window parts, and anything else that a CNC can do, basically, and it's definitely allowed us to construct more complex robots over the years. Then we also have a CNC router which enables us to do larger flat part and mass production, a laser cutter which is 4 feet by 3 feet, so pretty large, and a bunch of power and hand tools, plus manual machines, including mills, lathes, and a welder. That gives us the possibility of creating innovative attachments.

Annie, are these all battlebots you're building here?
Annie: Not really. They're more tactical than that. Battlebots are more about trying to destroy each other, we tend to create robots that can do tasks and compete in challenges, working in alliances with each other.

Does Paly Robotics participate in regional and national competitions?
Shota: Yes, we take part in the FIRST Robotics Competition each year. It's a high school league and, every year, the organizers release a game competition. The field is around 27 feet by 54 feet, so it's a pretty big location. On the first Saturday in January they release the game, game manual, and kit of parts. Then we analyze the game and start to design our robot. Six weeks after that we bag the robot.

What does 'bag the robot' mean?
Shota: It's called "bagging day" when all the teams have to complete their robot and put it in a bag with a zip tie around it. Making sure they don't touch it after that. But most teams, especially here in the Bay Area, create a duplicate robot to continue iterating as well as fixing the code.

Lawrence: Then, when we get to the competition venue, at the district or regional level, we're allowed to open the bag and modify the game robot with what we've learned.

What have the campers been doing this summer?
Annie: For summer camp we have four different tracks: Robot Design and Hardware; 3D Animation and Graphic Design; Programming; and Entrepreneurship and Web design. Each session is a week long; there were are two sessions this summer.

And this is the final day?
Shota: Yes, our robot design and hardware teams were given a kit of parts and created robots which will be completing a challenge at 2:30 p.m. today.

Annie: We had 140 registered students in total this summer. Twenty will be showing their robots to parents for this week's final "open house" in a few moments.

And the camp counselors are all older high school students, like you three?
Lawrence: Exactly. It's a 100 percent student-run summer camp.

No adult supervision?
Shota: Yes, we have a few mentors who make sure we're all safe, but we get to set the challenge, mentor the campers, and teach them the skills we learned ourselves when we were younger.

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Have you seen many robots here in Palo Alto outside of your own lab?
Annie: Well, there are a lot of delivery robots zooming around this town. In Town & Country [the shopping center], they had a salad-making robot at Califia [the restaurant started by former Google head chef Charlie Ayers] and they invited us to go and see it. That was cool.

As NASA Ames is less than 5 miles away, have you met their robots?
Shota: One of our robotics team here participated in the Zero Robotics competition, where they got to compile code which ran on the ISS, on the SPHERES robots. I wasn't on that team, but it sounded really great.

Final question: why do several of the camp counselors have the word 'Forseti' on their T-shirts?
Shota: Forseti was a Norse god. Palo Alto High School is the "Home of the Vikings" so we name all of our robots after Norse gods.

The Challenge Begins

In the gym, camp counselors were blasting Queen's "We Are The Champions" and checking that the robots were in position.

Finally, a whistle blew and two robots made of wood lurched into the arena, precariously supporting milk crates with yellow balls inside them.

It wasn't clear at first what the overall objective was, but it became obvious as the robots dashed for the other side to deposit the balls with a tipping mechanism, getting new ones to deliver in the opposite direction. Yes, there were obstacles and a dastardly uneven terrain, including a restricted entry over a ramp, which took some negotiations and a few false starts.

It was an exciting afternoon. Everyone seemed really keyed up by the whole experience, and watching middle schoolers race robots was definitely more fun than talking vaporware with the startup that Shall Not Be Named. I enjoyed it so much that I hope to be among those cheering contestants at the 2019 FIRST Championship in Houston next April.

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