More than robots – the human side of robotics

Earlier this month I had the truly inspiring experience of helping and cheering on students aged 12 to 18 as they worked their socks off with their teams in a robotics competition. Myself and 45 wonderful volunteers from Arm were supporting FIRST Tech Challenge UK, which does amazing work to run programmes where students are challenged to design, build, program, and operate robots to compete in an alliance with another team in head-to-head competitions.  

 The first thing that struck me when I saw the teams of young students at work was their genuine team spirit. Every member of the team was important, whether they were organising, programming or giving encouraging direction. FIRST’s philosophy is ‘gracious professionalism’ and ‘coopertition’ (what an excellent word!) and the judging took into account teamwork and co-operation as well as how well the robots were designed and performance.  

As with any successful values or beliefs system, there was evidence of gracious professionalism in action everywhere you looked. The young people were extremely motivated to do their absolute best, but never at the expense of others. On several occasions, you would see someone from one team spot another team having trouble with their robot and not hesitate in giving them a helping hand. In fact, one team would not have been able to take part on Friday had another team (the winning team in fact) not helped them. 

It was an extremely inspiring day and lots of thoughts occurred to me as I watched the students’ robots careering around the fields: 

• Am I meeting the young geniuses who will one day invent the autonomous cars we’ll all be driving? 
• Why as adults don’t we speak to each other as directly as young people do? The students’ straight-talking meant they were contentedly getting on with what needed doing – no second-guessing or over-analysing.  
• Success is based on what you’re judging yourself on. These amazing students rarely looked disappointed when their team and robot didn’t score as many points as other teams. They just seemed thrilled with the experience - to be working together and taking part. 

I’m so pleased that Arm is supporting this programme. We provide bursaries to level the playing field and make sure all young people can take part, regardless of financial circumstances. And I’m so proud of the kind and generous people from Arm who spent the day running around (often literally running) as volunteers to support the students, including colleagues from our office in Sophia Antipolis in France who have helped to set up and mentor three teams this year. It’s so important to us at Arm that we help young people pursue their passions in technology, engineering, science and maths. These bright young minds are the talent of tomorrow. 

The future is bright for FIRST. Their Founder, Vikrant, has a vision of ensuring that every young person can unlock opportunities through STEM. If you know a school that would love to get involved in this amazing programme, don’t hesitate to find out more!