Building a team — and a robot

On Wednesday night, the Palouse Area Robotics Team gathered their robot and equipment and packed it up before they started the roughly three-hour drive to Yakima.

The team is at the Sundome PNW competition today, and it’s the group’s second competition this month. At a competition in Clackamas, Ore. at the beginning of the month the group placed second and received an Engineering Inspiration Award for its outreach programs. The club is open to any student on the Palouse and is part of the 4-H program.

The team will go to districts for its outreach programs and will compete against other teams that received an Engineering Inspiration Award. The competition in Yakima will determine if the robot goes to districts as well.

Laura Harris, of Pullman, joined the club when she was in the eighth grade and is now a senior. Students in the team can learn how any number of the parts of the robot or outreach program work while part of the team, Harris said.

For first-year team member Andrew Kranick, joining the team gave him a chance to get better with the design program CAD. He came in with little experience and was able to learn how to use it and join the mechanical team for the robot build.

For head mentor Ben Herrmann, it’s great to see the students work together to build a robot that can weigh up to 225 pounds when finished.

“Seeing students come in as freshmen and having no idea how to turn this screwdriver, use a wrench and then in a year or two they’re designing an entire system that’s really cool,” Herrmann said.

Herrmann participated in the program when he was in elementary school in the FIRST Lego league before joining the FIRST Tech Challenge, which is aimed at high school students. His participation on the team led him to a career in engineering. The programs give students a chance to try out different STEM projects and talk to industry professionals about their projects while at competitions.

Harris said judges at the competitions will talk to any student on the team about the robot and the outreach. All the students on the Palouse Area Robotics team help with both to give all the students a range of experiences.

“I would argue this program was actually less about building a robot and more about building people,” Herrmann said.

Student collaborate not only on the teams, Herrmann said, but also with others. In past years he said he had seen the students come together to help other teams build their robots or troubleshoot issues.

“At the end of the day, we are competing in a live event, but that’s actually not the important part of it — it is learning how to work as a team,” Herrmann said.

The team also gives the students a chance to see where their interests lie. Euan McCubbin is a freshman at the University of Washington and was a member of the team last year. He is studying molecular biology and said the work he did on the team helped him choose that field.

“I definitely enjoyed the engineering aspect of it, but I kind of figured out it wasn’t really for me in terms of a career path. But I don’t think I would have known that if I didn’t do FRC (FIRST Robotics Competition),” McCubbin said.

Kali Nelson can be reached at knelson@dnews.com.