Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Robots And Beyond



Amid a sick economy and bitter wars over resources, Dean Kamen dreams of a world in which we exchange ideas, invest in the future and benefit from each other's creations.

To realize this dream, Kamen--an inventor perhaps best known for the Segway--founded FIRST. Short for "For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology," FIRST, founded 20 years ago, is a series of competitions intended to inspire youth to pursue careers as scientists, engineers and big thinkers by making math and science cool.


Kamen calls FIRST the "NCAA of smarts" and uses robot competitions to prove to kids that engineering is rewarding and just as fun as any high school sport. And unlike most high school sports, FIRST provides students with a very real look into a promising future as an engineer.

In Pictures: Making A Robot

Video: Rocking Robots

The 2TrainRobotics team from New York City's Morris High School demonstrates the power of FIRST. Morris High is located in the South Bronx, one of the poorest school districts in the U.S. Almost every day after school from September through April, students on the robot team travel an hour by train and bus to the Columbia University campus in upper Manhattan. Several Columbia students act as mentors, dedicating their time and energy to help the students not only build the robot, but also fill out college applications and help with their homework.

The competition has grown exponentially. During its first year, in 1989, FIRST attracted sponsorships from companies that included General Motors (nyse: GM - news - people ), DaimlerChrysler (nyse: DCX - news - people ), Delphi (other-otc: DPHI.PK - news - people ) and Motorola (nyse: MOT - news - people ). Since then the list of sponsors has grown to thousands of organizations, including the Girl Scouts of America, UPS (nyse: UPS - news - people ) and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.


In 1992 everyone who knew about FIRST could fit into a high school gym. Five years later, there was no venue left in the state of New Hampshire big enough to host the event.

So Kamen took the event to Disney (nyse: DIS - news - people ), which hosted the event at Epcot Center in Florida. FIRST eventually outgrew Epcot, and Houston's Astrodome offered to host. It's gotten so big that this year the national championships will be held at Atlanta's Georgia Dome­--a site large enough to hold 10,600 teams from 42 countries and the 75,000 mentor volunteers who will accompany them.

"We wouldn't have had this growth if we didn't clearly demonstrate the impact we have on the kids, mentors and parents," Kamen says. "Everyone involved with FIRST stays with it because they get more out of it than they put into it. The companies realize they are creating the next generation of their workforce and their customers. The schools realize they are leveraging the entire education system. The parents love seeing their kids passionate about things that have context to their career choices. The kids have their perspective changed on what is possible."

Teams of students ages nine and up participate in three levels of competitions: the FIRST Lego League (ages 9 through 14), the FIRST Tech Challenge (ages 13 through 16) and, for the high school students, the FIRST Robotics Competition.

Says FIRST President Paul Gudonis: "FIRST isn't about just building robots, but developing life skills." In Warren, Ohio, a town with a 50% high school graduation rate, 100% of the FIRST students graduate and go on to college, Gudonis says. In Washington, D.C., a 16-year-old FIRST student is expecting to be granted his first patent this month related to encrypting Internet communication. In Rochester, N.Y., a FIRST team collected 70,000 bottles and cans to pay its registration fee to be a part of the competition.

Many companies, including Johnson & Johnson (nyse: JNJ - news - people ), offer internships to FIRST students. GM, a founding sponsor and partner with FIRST for over a decade, has spent $135,000 a year to support FIRST programs in struggling inner-city districts.

Does Kamen follow any of the teams? "Do we follow them? No! We [DEKA Research, Kamen's company] hire them. They follow us," Kamen says. "In the last half dozen years, most of the kids we've hired out of colleges like Caltech, Stanford, MIT and Virginia Tech are FIRST alums."

Currently, FIRST is only in 8% of the 25,000 high schools in the U.S. In five years, Kamen wants FIRST to be in every school in the country. Within 20 years, he has an even more audacious goal: He wants the FIRST robotics competition to be the dominant sport of the 21st century.

The National Science Foundation says science, technology, engineering and math-related industries were responsible for nearly 50% of U.S. economic growth over the last 50 years, yet only 5% of the nation's workforce is employed in these fields.

Even in the middle of a recession and mounting unemployment, there are significant vacancies at some of the largest engineering companies in the U.S. For example, says FIRST's Gudonis, BAE Systems (other-otc: BAESF.PK - news - people ), a global defense security and aerospace systems company, is trying to hire 200 engineering professionals in the U.S. Recently, 1,500 people showed up at a job fair, but the company only hired 50 because it couldn't find the technical talent it needs. FIRST creates a talent pipeline for companies like BAE systems; the company sponsors and mentors some 100 FIRST teams across the country.

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