Press Releases

A conference this weekend will determine how a few hundred robot engineers from Portland and Vancouver high schools chart the next six weeks of their lives.

Dedicated members and leaders of 51 metropolitan area robotics clubs will meet Saturday at Catlin Gable School in Beaverton to learn how to prime a 130-pound robot for a regional competition that takes place each March in Portland.

The clubs belong to an organization called FIRST - For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. It started in 1989 to encourage interest in science and technology at the K-12 level.

FIRST sets the guidelines for how to build the robots so they qualify for the competition. Last year, for example, teams were told in January to build a robot able to hurtle lightweight foam balls through the air. The goal was to launch as many balls as possible into a set of three goals in just over two minutes.

To build a robot from scratch, teams must come up with money for supplies and competition fees, which can add up to thousands of dollars. Local high-tech companies and private donors foot most of the bill.

Westview High School is the Westside's first robotics team. Its membership of approximately two dozen students is double to what it was when it started last year. There are students from Century High School and the School of Science and Technology in Beaverton on the team, although most attend Westview.

Westview students build robot -- and confidence

Ask the 10-member robotics team at Westview High School. In six weeks' time, they planned, designed and built a rolling, task-performing robot. So did students at 37 other schools across the Northwest and stretching into Canada. Recently the robots met on a battlefield of sorts at Portland's Memorial Coliseum.

Six teams emerged victorious, including Westview's, which received the Rookie All-Star Award. The honor earns the team a spot at the FIRST Robotics Championship in Atlanta on April 21-23.

The problem: Entry fees, plane tickets, lodging, food and transportation of the robot, tools and parts will cost at least $15,000, maybe more. So far, the team has raised $10,000.

"It's expensive to participate in this competition, especially as a rookie team with few corporate sponsors," says 15-year-old Anjali Menon, one of the team's three captains. "We had to raise $10,000 just to compete in regional competition. But it's worth it.

The students have adult mentors, but they perform most of the design and work. Besides figuring out how to build a robot, they program it to perform competitive missions.

FIRST, or For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, sponsors the brain-challenging competition. Inventor Dean Kamen, best known for his Segway Human Transporter, started the annual event 15 years ago.

This year, more than 20,000 students from the United States, Canada, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico and Great Britain are participating. About 200 teams are expected in Atlanta.

Westview students became involved because of brothers Jean and Caio Tenca. The Tencas last summer moved from Corvallis, where Jean competed for three years on the Crescent Valley High School robotics team.

"We told him we'd do everything possible to start a team in Beaverton," says their mother and team coach Williane Tenca. Her husband, Alexandre, who has a doctorate in computer engineering, serves as the team's lead mentor.

Their first day at Westview, the brothers started spreading the word. Thirty students signed up. But after learning of the costs involved, only 10 stuck.

Raising money and finding adult mentors has become much of the program. Registration for regional competition is $6,000. That buys a robot-making kit, but another $4,000 or so is needed for additional parts and technology.

The Westview team found sponsors and built a robot. Then members cheered at competition as Sir Forkelot lifted tetrahedrons and placed them in point-earning areas on the playing field.

That's how they earned the Rookie All-Star award, something the team did not expect.

Now they need more money -- and lots of it. One mentor has pledged $5,000, which has been matched by the Oregon Space Grant Consortium. But another $5,000, at least, is needed to get the team to Atlanta.

"It's difficult, because most people have never heard of our program," says Jean Tenca, who plans to major in mechanical engineering at college. He stands in Westview's computer room, next to the machine shop where students built the forklift-like robot.

"This isn't something most people did in high school," he says. "It takes awhile to explain what we're doing. But when people see the robot and what it can do, they want to help.

Tenca's parents can attest to that. Williane Tenca says Jean's interest in physics and math has increased since joining the robotics program.

Menon has had a similar experience. One of two girls on the team, she says she didn't know what a socket wrench was, let alone how to use it, when they first started building Sir Forkelot.

"This has been a huge learning experience," she says. "Not only have I learned how to build a robot, I've learned how to be a better speaker.

"These are skills we'll use all of our lives," she says, "whether we become engineers or sidewalk artists."

BEAVERTON VALLEY TIMES - PDF

robovation Team Robot
Victoria Blake - 12/09/04

Westview students ready to test their robotic skills with NASA challenge

Members of the first Westview High School Robotics Team pose with their test robot during an after-school meeting.
Jaime Valdez / The Times

Countdown. Twenty-nine days, 22 hours and 30 minutes from the release date of this year's robotics challenge.

At 7 a.m. on Jan. 8, thousands of high school robotics teams will sit in front of hundreds of televisions broadcasting the NASA channel and receive marching orders for their robot's design.

For the first time, 15 Westview High School students will be part of the mob.
The annual robotics competition, organized by FIRST, challenges students to design and produce robots capable of completing simple tasks.

From the time the students receive their challenge, they have six weeks to design, build and ship the robot off to the competition.

Each year, students are given a different challenge. Past challenges include making a robot do a chin up or stack containers or suck soccer balls into a cage.

Though the Westview students don't know what this year's challenge will be, they know that it will test their design ability and force them to apply all that math, science and engineering they might have glossed over in their classroom textbooks.

"We're going to need the whole six weeks," said team leader and Westview senior Jean Tenca. "Six weeks is nothing."

In a way, the beginnings of the Westview team resemble the plot line of a typical underdog sports movie.

Last year, when Tenca moved from Corvallis to Beaverton, he wanted to continue his winning robotics streak and was looking for a school he could do it in.

Westview didn't have a team, so he made one. The students who joined up had no experience with computer-aided design, power tool operation or problem-solving engineering.

But they had heart.

"A lot of the kids on this team, they haven't even touched a tool in their entire lives," Tenca said. "We're trying to teach them the basics."

They also, importantly, didn't have enough money. The robotics competition requires a $6,000 registration fee just to go to one regional event, and another $4,000 for each additional event.

If the team wins regionals, it qualifies for nationals, held every year in Florida.

The robot itself uses at least $4,000 worth of parts and materials. And that's not counting the hardware and software the thing needs to run.

The team has raised a few thousand dollars and some parts from local donors Synopsys, the Beaverton Education Foundation and Norvac Electronics.

In addition, team members received $6,000 from Lego, a grant that pays their registration fee.

Still, the team's goal is to raise $10,000. And, because it is the first year and it doesn't yet have the groundswell of parent support established teams do, Westview is looking for mentors.

Somebody with a Ph.D. in electrical engineering would be nice, but a competent welder or machinist would be welcome and treated like a king.

"They want to win," said Williane Tenca, Jean's mother and team coordinator. "But what we really want is for them to learn."

Williane tries to encourage the students to "be crazy when they have ideas," she said. "Don't think it's impossible. That's the way impossible things get made. By being crazy."

The team meets every Tuesday after school until the Jan. 8 challenge. Then it's 12-hour days on the weekends and six-hour nights after school.

The schedule was characterized as "the end of sleep as we know it" on one Canadian team's Web site.

In the meantime, however, the Westview team is putting the chicken before the egg - or the cart before the robot - to amp themselves up for the big challenge.

At last Tuesday's meeting, the Westview students gathered around a dry-erase board to brainstorm ideas for the crate in which their robot would eventually be shipped.

They know a couple things to get them started. First, the robot will weigh 130 pounds, standard competition weight. Second, the crate has to open and become a work table for the competition.

Third, it's got to look really cool, Tenca said.

"It's kind of neat to show off your crate."

BEAVERTON VALLEY TIMES

Jean Tenca, right, and his brother Caio Tenca, both Westview High School students and founding members of the school's Robotics Team, guide their robot during the FIRST Robotics Competition March 11.
Jonathan House / The Times

Westview's first robotics team rocks 'em and socks 'em to earn a place in national competition

Robot 1510 is a handsome triangle of a machine with a protractible arm that extends 11 feet in the air.

It has an electronic eye that can sense colors, two robust conveyer-belt lined wheels and a complicated mass of electrical wires.

It also has a brain.

Or, rather, it has 10.

Robot 1510 is the creation of Westview High School's robotics team. Ten students and a handful of parent- and teacher-mentors logged more than 2,000 hours since Jan. 8 to create a robot whose one purpose in life is to raise nine-pound tetrahedrons off the ground.

During Friday's FIRST Robotics Competition at Portland's Memorial Coliseum, the robot (nicknamed Sir Forkelot by its creators) did its job so well that competition judges awarded 1510 with the Rookie All-Star prize.

The Westview team that started the year with many members confused about how to hold a screwdriver has now earned a coveted place at April's FIRST National Competition in Florida.

"Nationals are big," said team den-mother Williane Tenca.

At nationals, the Westview team will have to hold their own against 200 of the country's best high school builders.

"It's just amazing."

The weekend's FIRST regional competition was a rough-and-tumble, no-holds-barred event pitting colorfully dressed, enthusiastic teams of high school students against one another in a knock-down drag-out match of tick tack toe.

The robot's job was to cap triangular bases with colored tetrahedrons, either blue or red depending on which side they were on.

Each round started with an "autonomous mode" event, during which robots had to find a tetrahedron on the field, pick it up and carry it over to a base, all without human intervention.

Then it got ugly. Robots attacked other robots in a mechanical approximation of football's blitzing defense.

Robots lost chains, pulleys, radios and wires. Some were knocked on their backs, their wheels spinning helplessly in the air.

Robot 360 was a low-slung ramming ball of a machine, ostensibly designed to push competitor's out of the way.

By the end of each match, robots slinked back to their corners to wait for a referee to call the game.

The crowd in the Coliseum, some 1,000 strong, cheered and rose to their feet to celebrate the winners.

As one match ended, another match readied to begin. Robots, accompanied by their human operators, lined the hallways of the Coliseum, waiting for their chance in the ring.

And the student-creators - dressed in team costumes, some as court jesters some as pirates and some as private-school girls - talked shop with one another, exchanging tips on how to drive their robot or how to best edge forward in the match.

Westview team captain Jean Tenca, an 18-year-old senior and founder of the team, wore blue safety glasses while tightening an errant wire on Sir Forkelot between rounds on Friday.

In addition to team leader and organizer, Jean's job was head driver, the human controller in charge of guiding the robot over the field.

"It's both fun and nerve-racking," Jean Tenca said. "If something goes wrong, you feel like it's your fault."

By midday on Friday, halfway through the competition, Sir Forkelot had performed remarkably well.

The Westview team was seeded fifth out of 37 and their robot was winning the attention of the judges.

Jean Tenca stepped back and surveyed his team. One young man changed the programming to help Sir Forkelot perform during the autonomous mode. Another checked the wheels.

"We've accomplished more than we thought we would," Jean Tenca said.

"The robot is a celebration of what you have come through in the last six weeks."

Westview Robotics Team
School: Westview High
Grant Award: $500.00 - 2004/2005 Robotics Team

The Westview Robotics Team will give students the opportunity to explore the "cutting edge" concepts and applications that are currently being utilized in the industry. Students will design, develop and manufacture a robot. The team will then participate in the events and competitions sponsored by FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology). In the process of building the robot, team members will learn new approaches to problem solving and team organization within a team of students, teachers and engineers.

Westview Robotics Team
School: Westview High School
Grant Award: $5,000.00 - 2005/2006 Robotics Team

The Robotics Team will give students the opportunity to explore the "cutting edge" concepts and applications that are being utilized in the industry. They will design, develop, and manufacture a robot. Students are mentored and supported by a group of volunteer parents, teachers and engineers. The Robotics Team will participate in events and competitions sponsored by FIRST (For Inspiration, and Recognition of Science and Technology). Through this program students will acquire real technical skills, and a unique understanding of the industry, as well as new approaches to problem solving and team organization.

Helping kids get hooked on robotics is only part of what Bob Hendel does. He's also changing kids' lives.

Hendel, the Oregon Corporate Services Technical Services Programs Manager at Ronler Acres, has been with Intel for 17 years. A teacher of a Mentoring at Intel course for managers and individual contributors, he started mentoring the robotics team at Westview High School in Beaverton just last year. Now he's hooked, too.

He first learned of the robotics program when some Westview students knocked at his door inquiring about funding for the program. To get the program started at Westview, the students needed to raise $10,000. Bob invited them in and gave them some money. Then he went one step further. He sat down to talk with them and decided he could get involved and be a mentor.

What he discovered was that the students in the program go through a metamorphosis. They soon overcome their insecurities, gain more confidence and begin to display more positive and respectful behavior to their advisors and peers.

His biggest reward has been stimulating the kids to want to take on engineering careers as a future endeavor. "It gets the kids early enough to think about engineering, inspiring them about math, science and programming," he said. One of the captains from last year's team is now in a mechanical engineering program.

The Westview Robotics Team has already earned multiple awards, including a 1st Place (Rookie All Star) at the Pacific Northwest Regional in Portland. At the Championship in Atlanta, Georgia they received the highest Rookie Seed award. They were ranked 2nd in their division's qualification rounds consisting of 85 teams.

Rooting for robotics Students at Westview High School are getting together as a team to solve an engineering problem using a robot. It is part of a competition that gathers hundreds of teams from 50 states and other countries. The competition looks like any sports competition, where dedication, ability and teamwork come together to determine the winner.

Different from sports, it enriches the students' educational experience, builds their technical skills and gives them a chance to interact with high-tech professionals. It helps students make a career decision toward science and engineering.

For two years, the Beaverton Education Foundation is helping fund the robotics team, promoting this wonderful opportunity to high school students in the Beaverton School District.

The foundation wisely passes on to the community the donations received from people like you, and it depends on your support to continue its mission to improve the educational environment in our district. Please, consider helping BEF in its Phone-a-Thon, Nov. 14-17. Alex Tenca Head Mentor, Westview Robotics Team 1510, Beaverton

This year, Synopsys helped sponsor a team of high school students in a robotics competition called "For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology" or FIRST. Dr. Alex Tenca, Synopsys staff engineer in the Hillsboro, Oregon office, along with his wife and two children, founded the Beaverton Oregon FIRST team. Dr. Tenca was one of the mentors for the group, which got its start with seed money from a Synopsys Grant secured by Dr. Tenca. He and his group of students worked on their project at Westview High School in Beaverton for this year's FIRST robotics competition.

One of the primary goals of the Synopsys Global Citizenship program is to encourage hands-on science education. Many of these projects encourage education and achievement in science and technology. Through its participation in projects like FIRST, Synopsys is helping educate the engineers, scientists and technologists of the future.

Specifically, the FIRSTrobotics competition is a multinational event where high school students and professionals solve an engineering design problem in an intense and interactive learning environment. In 2005, the competition included more than 30,000 students in about 1,000 teams from almost every U.S. state, as well as from Brazil, Canada, Ecuador, Israel, Mexico and the U. K. FIRST offered almost $5 million in scholarships to team members.

Each year, a new competition challenge is unveiled at the beginning of January. The teams then have only six weeks to strategize, design, build and program a robot to meet the challenge. The participants learn to apply science, math and technology to the design, construction, programming and troubleshooting of a 130-pound robot.

"It's not only about building the robot," says Dr. Tenca. "The robot is only a vehicle for a learning experience that lasts a lifetime. We are exposed to and practice the concept of 'Gracious Professionalism.' The only time a team competes against the other is on the field. Off the field, all the teams work together, helping each other in every way possible."

At the Pacific Northwest Regional, the Westview team received the Rookie All-Star award, the most prestigious award a rookie team can achieve. The Westview team ranked 15th in the qualification rounds and made it all the way to the semi-finals. Only four awards at each regional qualify a team to attend the championships.

After the regionals, the team was invited to the championship in Atlanta, Georgia. The team ranked second in their division's qualification rounds, consisting of 85 teams, and received the Highest Rookie Seed Award. They also made it all the way to finals, placing second, and almost breaking a record for a rookie team making it that far in the competition.

Synopsys is proud of the Westview team's achievements, as it is of all the people who are involved in Synopsys' Community Relations projects.

Donors play unsung role in student achievement

Thursday, November 03, 2005

OREGONIAN

Headlines don't tell us everything. It would be easy for casual readers to feel comforted, even complacent, as they sip their morning coffee and scan the paper: "Beaverton students show significant gains in statewide testing."

Yes, the test scores in our schools continue to climb. That's exciting. But what's thrilling for me as an educator is that student achievement has come not just from inside the schools, but from outside.

Thanks to community support, every year we gain new, innovative programs that touch hard-to-reach students and inspire top achievers to reach even higher. Those programs are made possible through the Beaverton Education Foundation.

Since 1999, private donations to the foundation that have exceeded $1 million have paid for more than 500 classroom and summer and after-school programs that would not have been possible within district budgets.

The foundation hopes to extend those programs to every one of the district's 46 schools. Between Nov. 14 and 17, hundreds of student volunteers will make phone calls, asking you to support these critical programs. I can tell you why you need to support them.

As an elementary school principal, I have seen first-hand how those programs spark hope for struggling students and parents and light fires under others who need a challenge.

When you think of student achievement, you may not think of the special needs class at Beaver Acres Elementary. For some of those students, a monumental achievement was ordering a meal at a fast-food restaurant, then having the patience and confidence to stand in the checkout line and pay.

For others it was overcoming the fear of using a public restroom or reading the walk/don't-walk sign at an intersection. Project Out and About took these students into the community: to restaurants, the pet store, the airport, to ride MAX and even to ride horses.

These outings eroded fears and bolstered skills, confidence and independence. One boy who was too frightened to touch a horse on the first outing ultimately was the first to hop into the saddle and ride. Parents say the program changed their children's lives.

Another program at Beaver Acres had as much effect on the parents as the children. Families who read together grow into lifelong learners together. Members of the Family Book Club gathered monthly to discuss a book the children had read with parents. Discussions and activities helped them discover the delight of reading. Their mutual accomplishments set them on a path to academic success.

One program transforms Stoller Middle School students into entrepreneurs. Under Blue Inc., more than 300 students form corporations, then design and build products that they market and sell. That's real-life learning that incorporates basic academics and also demands market-force excellence in creativity, strategy, teamwork and follow-through.

Perhaps even more cutting edge is the Westview High Robotics Team, which draws students from a number of schools. They work side-by-side with engineering professionals to design and manufacture a 130-pound robot. Students demonstrate their creation at nationwide competitions. The program uses the best of high-tech to teach math, physics, computer, design, collaboration and presentation.

Each Beaverton Education Foundation-sponsored program provides our children with the building blocks for academic success. National research shows that this type of after-school program also improves attendance and decreases dropout rates.

To pay for programs this year, the foundation hopes to raise $600,000. Eighty percent of the foundation's money comes from individuals like you. The rest comes from corporate support.

When you are considering your contribution, rest assured that it's a good investment in our children's future and the future of this community.

Robin Case retired from the Beaverton School District in 2002 after 32 years as a teacher and administrator. Her son attended Beaverton schools and graduated from Westview in 1998. She is serving as interim principal at Findley Elementary School and is a board member of the Beaverton Education Foundation.

Students primed for robotics competition

A group of high school amateur engineers at Westview High School that make up the Westside's only robotics team will find out next week if a 120-pound robot they call Esteban the Snail is prime for national attention.

The team's 21 members belong to a robotics club that nearly doubled in membership since it started last year and swept rookie categories at regional robotics competitions - and the sought-after national competition.

"You can see how they leave here a better person," said Westview junior Caio Tenca, who is also a team captain.

"There is a mix of confident and shy kids who all want to help," said Anjali Menon, a sophomore at Westview and a team co-captain.

To build a robot from scratch, teams must come up with money for supplies and competition fees, which can add up to thousands of dollars. Local high-tech companies, including Synopsys, and other private sources donated money, supplies and mentors.

Teams have six weeks to build a robot that will eventually hurtle lightweight foam balls through the air, with the goal of launching as many balls as possible into a set of three goals in just over two minutes.

Forty-six teams from the West Coast and British Columbia will compete with Westview's team in the Pacific Northwest Regional FIRST Robotics Competition at the Memorial Coliseum in Portland. The three-day event will run from 8 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., Thursday, March 2; 8 a.m.-6 p.m., Friday, March 3; and 8 a.m.-5 p.m., Saturday, March 4. The public is encouraged to attend and admission is free.

All teams will compete to enter in the national competition in Atlanta, Ga., in April.

School: Westview High School
Grant Award: $5,000.00
The Robotics Team will give students the opportunity to explore the "cutting edge" concepts and applications that are being utilized in the industry. They will design, develop, and manufacture a robot. Students are mentored and supported by a group of volunteer parents, teachers and engineers. The Robotics Team will participate in events and competitions sponsored by FIRST (For Inspiration, and Recognition of Science and Technology). Through this program students will acquire real technical skills, and a unique understanding of the industry, as well as new approaches to problem solving and team organization.



Home - Members - Mentors - Alumni - Sponsors - Challenge - Awards - History - Press - Outreach - Workshops - Club/Team - Impact - OR Teams - Contact - Forum - FIRST - Inventor