Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
WEBER COUNTY — Robotics is all about control.
"You can use like a catapult, you can use this lift and claw idea, like we have," said Madison Wadsworth, the official robot driver.
Teams of high schoolers around the world work with a variety of products provided by a company called Vex — each team can use the available parts to solve a certain problem in a nearly infinite number of ways.
Wadsworth steers a robot she and her friends built, using what appears to be a video game controller. Their robot has changed over time, as they've refined their design.
One by one, she uses a claw to pick up items, drives them to a small barrier, and drops them on the other side.
This project is a true team effort. One of BreAnn Carlin's jobs is to scout other teams.
"How many stars can they pick up, how many cubes can they pick up," she said. "I do that, and that kind of helps with strategy because I see how we could make our team and their team work together."
Naomi Elmer tracks their robot's evolution with a series of notebooks from its beginnings to its current form — something that counts for big points in competitions.
"Slowly as you get to the end, we start becoming more advanced," she said, flipping through the pages.
Makaiya Nunn sits in front of a laptop, examining code as the team's programmer. She spends a lot of time working on the robot's "autonomous" settings when it's expected to move about on its own.
"The robot is all on its own, our driver has no control over it," she said. "It just kind of makes it more accurate, like picking up stars and then going to the wall."
This team effort is a unique one.
"For the last three years, there's been an all-girls team," Wadsworth said.
The Weber School District has been encouraging girls to head down paths like this one.
"I feel like it's just breaking the ice with girls now," Elmer said. "It's becoming more out there and more common and more broadcast out. The colleges each have little programs they do for girls. There's summer camps and activities that help us get involved in that."
Having an entire team of girls working on a robot certainly makes them unique, but being unique can also bring challenges. At the recent state tournament, part of the process involved finding another team to partner with.
"I think a lot of guys look at us and think 'Oh, they're girls, their robot's probably not as good,'" Nunn said.
Many boys chose to partner with teams with much lower rankings.
"We were one of the top teams, but everybody was picking teams lower than us," said Nunn. "We couldn't find a good alliance."
"That just makes us kind of mad because we're doing the same thing they are doing, and we work just as hard," Carlin said.
"We were even ranked like first, and people wouldn't talk to us, they wouldn't approach us," Elmer said. "It's kind of sad to see that we're so underestimated sometimes."
But their team proved everyone wrong.
"We beat the first place team," Nunn said. "So that was pretty awesome, to say 'Hey, we're girls, but we still won.'"
"When we beat them, it definitely feels good," Carlin said with a laugh.
This team did so well, they've earned a trip to the Vex World Championships next week in Louisville, Kentucky.
With teams coming from across the globe, Elmer calls it the "big time."
"Yeah," she said with a smile. "The big, big time."
These girls also have their sights set on the future —they're all entertaining ideas of pursuing some of the subjects they've studied during the course of building robots, as possible career choices— proving that while robotics may be all about control, no one can tell them what they can't do.
"Girls are just as good as boys, and they can do everything that boys can do," said Wadsworth. "So why can't they do this?"
The all-girls team is one of several who've earned a spot at the world championships. If you'd like to help cover the cost to send the girls to the competition or help some of the other programs run by the Weber School Foundation, you can visit their website.*
*KSL.com does not assure that the money deposited to the account will be applied for the benefit of the persons named as beneficiaries. If you are considering a deposit to the account, you should consult your own advisors and otherwise proceed at your own risk.
