West Seattle tech: Seattle Lutheran in robotics competition

West Seattle is a hotbed of high-tech learning, with robotics programs at several local schools — and one of them, Seattle Lutheran High School, is the only West Seattle participant in a competition next week at KeyArena, the FIRST Robotics Microsoft Seattle Regional. Bil Hood from SLHS tells WSB, “There will be teams from all over the US as far as Florida, as well as Canada and even Turkey at the event.” SLHS is one of four Seattle-area schools scheduled to compete (Evergreen, just south of here, is part of it too); Bil shares this link to video of the school’s current robot. The theme this year, he explains, is the Moon (here’s a national-level explanation of the competition) — Bil explains that it “tries to recreate lunar gravity for the robots while they try and pick up moon rocks to load onto competitors’ robots.” Competition happens next Thursday-Saturday; here’s the agenda.

Jim March 20, 2009 (11:40 am)

Aviation High School (a Highline school) with its open enrollment has many West Seattle students as well. They are a third year team, Skunkworks Team 1983. They did very well in the Portland Regional a couple weeks back and have been to Atlanta for the finals the previous two years. They will be at the Seattle regional as well.

WSB March 20, 2009 (11:50 am)

Thanks – we’ll look for them when covering this next week. They are listed as Des Moines on the roster
https://my.usfirst.org/myarea/index.lasso?page=teamlist&area=WA-USA&event_type=ALL&sort=location
so I didn’t notice when doublechecking … TR

cjboffoli March 20, 2009 (12:08 pm)

FIRST is a brilliant program, started in the early 90’s by engineer Dean Kamen, inventor of (among other things) the Segway. Kamen was troubled by the fact that such a small percentage (around 6%) of high school graduates express interest in pursuing engineering degrees in college. And he was troubled by the fact that, while most kids knew who Michael Jordan was, few knew the names of the scientists and engineers whose innovations actually had much more impact upon their lives.
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He wanted to make science more exciting. So he designed this annual competition in which schools around the country would get identical kits with all sorts of motors, servos and parts. From those kits they would design radio-controlled robots and would compete with each other at national competitions. The challenges were different every year but usually consisted in having to navigate a field of obstacles, trying to move a ball to an opposing goal, or something like that all the while the opposing same is trying to do the same while doing their best to thwart the progress of each other. That was my impression of the way it used to be. I’m sure it is much more sophisticated these days. But either way, it is an excellent catalyst to get talented young minds excited and inspired about engineering and design.
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I actually met Kamen once when I attended a guest lecture he did in Boston. He was a very cool and engaging guy. He never finished college though. He was impatient with going to classes. So he dropped out and invented, I think, some kind of portable kidney dialysis machine. First of its kind. He made a few hundred million from that and it was off to the races.

Jerald March 20, 2009 (2:26 pm)

This is really fun to watch and deserves a bigger audience. It’s amazing what the teams come up with.

fiz March 20, 2009 (7:31 pm)

We cannot express sufficient gratitude to SLHS for the education, grounding and college preparation through Christ-centered education that our kids received. Both have MS and PhD’s and excel in their chosen fields. If you have an opportunity or calling to make the sacrifice to send your kids to SLHS, do whatever it takes to put them there. You will not regret that decision.

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