The Joy of a Room Full of Teenage Roboticists

There's a lot that one can say about coaching a team, but most of the things that might be said don't really apply to a robotics team. I'm recalling the times I was involved in coaching sports, and those times really don't quite compare to what goes on in our team meetings.

I enter as exhibit 1 the remarkable difference in humor among athletes and techno-geeks. Athlete humor when I was growing up involved Ben-Gay placed in strategic locations inside someone's underwear. Humor with these guys involves making a blooper reel from team work sessions or hijacking someone's unattended login on the computer to send emails home. Athletes snap towels at each other in the showers after practice. Techno-geeks throw foam balls across the room hoping, usually against hope, to land the ball somewhere remotely near the target. I periodically wonder why they even bother throwing rather than constructing an apparatus that could launch the ball with a greater degree of accuracy. However, I dare not suggest that lest the unleash a barrage reminiscent of the artillery fire at Iwo Jima.

When in doubt about what is truly important one only need listen to a room full of geeks to figure out that these things are what matter: food, computer games, and discovering the secret that allows for faster-than-light travel. It's not much of a stretch to think that most people can figure out where the similarities between athletes and brain-sport competitors end. But that's not all bad. In fact, in a team meeting earlier this week the topic of how sci-fi can drive innovation came up and it was as if someone had turned on a heavenly light and angelic voices in the room. Suddenly it was as if all was right in the world and robots and man would live as one in peace and harmony -- like cats and dogs.

Fortunately that was the point at where the really off the wall thinking ended and they progressed to discussions about robotic dump trucks and cranes. Not as exciting as the aforementioned robotopia, but certainly not as other worldly either. Anyway, this year's competition season is under way and looking much better than last year. A taste of victory has whet the appetites of these guys and they are gelling like a real team. We've gotten more done in three team meetings this week than we did in three weeks last year.

Now that's not to say that it will all continue to go so well. There may be days when the air will be filled with nerf ordnance, but even those are well worth enduring to spend time with a great bunch of kids.