After two long years without the thrill of competing in-person, students were excited to get back into the spotlight and chase wins; and what a return it was. Exceeding our usual number of teams, we resolved to field up to fifteen teams this season for the World Robotics Olympiad (WRO) and Zone01 competitions. Of the fifteen teams we sponsored and sent, eleven had winning runs and advanced to the next stage. Students were thrilled to be back in that fast-paced environment, proving their abilities and utilizing all that they have learned. Coaches were not allowed to assist teams, and despite running into some issues with sensors, lighting, and their build, students displayed excellent independence and mastery of skills to prevail and were able to bypass these issues without any input from coaches.
Zone01 Student Contestants Arriving to Compete
Zone01 finals took place in May, in Montreal. With six teams traveling to compete in the finals, families came along to support the students and enjoy the trip along with them. It was not only a time to vacation, though – students were up early to compete at 8am against teams from all over Canada. Students, naturally, experienced issues with their robots and runs again; however, armed with experience from their previous runs, they were able to conquer these issues with a clear head. Three teams succeeded to the podium and all around got to enjoy not only victory but a wonderful experience in the city with their family and friends.
Zone01Contestants and Winners.
Students and coaches alike cannot wait to go out and compete again, looking forward to the upcoming WRO finals and beyond. The first set of competitions back turned out to be a fantastic experience to fuel the fire of learning and excitement for all things STEM and Robotics for the Zebra Robotics family.
Congratulations Nikhil, on accepting the offer from the Univ of Toronto, Engineering Science program. You chose this program over Comp Sci and Mechatronics programs from Univ of Toronto, McMaster and UofWaterloo. We want to share your perspective about coding and robotics with younger Zebra Robotics students who want to pursue their higher education in STEM programs.
How did you get interested in Coding or Robotics?
I’ve always been fascinated by technology, and like many other children, I always loved creating things of my own – so I guess it only makes sense that I’m interested in coding and robotics nowadays. Robotics and coding didn’t initially start out as passions for me, but as I became more comfortable with those topics through classes and competition experiences, I was able to improve my skills – I started to be inspired by the things that other people had done in the past with regards to robotics and coding, and eventually, I saw the results of my own work in competition environments. I think that really opened my mind to what was possible in these fields, and I’ve been hooked ever since.
Tell us a bit about yourself, your hobbies and what you like to do when you are not working on your school or university work.
My name is Nikhil, and I’m going into my first year of Engineering Science at the University of Toronto. My main hobby is competitive robotics – I’ve been heavily involved with numerous robotics teams at Zebra, from FLL to WRO to VEX, as well as teams outside Zebra, such as my high school’s FRC team. I continue to mentor some of these teams. In the coming years, I plan on being involved with design teams at UofT as well. Apart from that, I’m fairly boring – I watch Netflix/YouTube and play video games like everyone else.
How long were you a student at Zebra Robotics? What did you like most at Zebra during that time?
I’ve been involved with Zebra for over 7 years now. All my favourite moments have to do with competitions – I’ve always enjoyed working on these large, long-term projects; watching plans develop and things build up into a frenzy, and anxiously waiting to see how the team will do at the real event – will we have fixed all our problems, or will a bad line of code bring everything crashing down when it really matters? It’s all part of the competition experience, and in the end, it’s the journey of preparing for a competition that makes it all worthwhile.
How did you manage your time between schoolwork and other activities, including robotics or coding sessions at Zebra Robotics?
Some parts of the year have always been busier than others for me, due to the nature of robotics competition seasons. In those busy times, proper planning and prioritization have always been important. My schoolwork was a high priority, especially in my final years of high school, and I always tried to stay up to date on it so that I’d have time to focus on extracurriculars. However, deadlines in robotics competitions and other school clubs would often have me reshuffling my priorities to get certain time-sensitive tasks done sooner rather than later. Managing my time between schoolwork and extracurriculars would sometimes become a bit of a juggling act, and so to stay on top of everything, I would use a daily and weekly to-do list, while also keeping close track of my deadlines. In those situations where prioritization becomes tough, I’m a fan of the Eisenhower matrix – search it up if you haven’t heard of it!
What would you say if you were to suggest a few things to aspiring Engineering or Computer Science university students?
I know that there’s a lot of hype these days surrounding engineering and computer science, so first of all, I would recommend that you find out if you’re truly passionate about these fields by trying them out. Try some coding, participate in some robotics competitions, and get a feel for it. That’s one of the best things about engineering and computer science – there’re so many ways to get involved in classes, clubs, and competitions in high school, and even earlier. Not only will your visible interest in computer science or engineering make your university application stand out, but it’ll also help inform your choice when applying to and picking programs – after all, you want to end up in a field you’re truly passionate about. Also, speaking of university applications, (you’ll hear it a lot, but I’ll say it again) remember that marks aren’t everything. Marks are definitely very important – but after a certain point, it’s your experiences and skills outside of the classroom that make you a solid applicant. Chances are, if you’re reading this, you’re already getting those experiences and developing those skills, which is great!
Congrats Srijay on choosing Mechatronics at the University of Waterloo. Srijay has been part of many robotics teams with Zebra Robotics. In this write-up, we asked Srijay questions about his interest and his passion for robotics. His time management skill could come in handy for many aspiring university students.
How did you get interested in Robotics? When I was in grade five, I didn’t know much about coding and robotics, but I always thought they were both very interesting. When I joined Zebra Robotics, I discovered that I really enjoy both coding and robotics and I decided to continue learning. From this point on robotics became a passion of mine and I always strived to learn more about it.
Tell us a bit about yourself, your hobby and what you’d like to do when you are not working on your school or university work. My name is Srijay Mundlur I’m 17 and I am going into my first year of university this fall. Some of my hobbies include sports, video games, and robotics. When I’m not doing school-related work I enjoy learning about the new technologies of the world and playing different games with friends.
How long were you a student at Zebra Robotics? What did you like most at Zebra during that time? I was a student at Zebra Robotics for about 6 years and I enjoyed doing many different things there. My favourite part about my time at Zebra Robotics was all the different competitions I got to participate in. I participated in both WRO and FLL and I always enjoyed how each year’s challenge made you learn different things about your robot and team. The challenges pushed us to learn new things every year and I always enjoyed competing against other teams.
How did you manage your time between the school work and other activities, including robotics or coding sessions at Zebra Robotics? One of the most important things I learnt while time managing both robotics and schoolwork is to get your work early. Procrastination can lead to both of your robotics and schoolwork piling up, so it was very important for me to finish all of my schoolwork as soon as I got it. This is even more important when preparing for robotics competitions because you could be called to work anytime.
What would you say if you were to suggest a few things to aspiring Engineering or Computer Science university students? I would tell them to get involved in as many engineering and computer science clubs and opportunities as they can. Getting hands-on experience is very helpful in these fields and it can help you decide which aspects you wish to specialize in the future. I would also suggest trying to talk to older students and adults working in the fields you are interested in to get advice on what field you should try to pursue a career in.
Team 16539 OutsiderZ, and Team 4047, Fitnovators, FLL (First Lego League) teams from Mississauga, Ontario, participated in Western University and Waterloo qualifying tournaments respectively, won Core Value, robot design awards and are advancing to Ontario Provincials to be held the week of May 3rd virtually.
They were excited to form a team and start preparing for “2020 First Lego League” season. Due to COVID lockdown and restrictions to meeting in person, they delayed their kick-off meeting till mid-September 2020. They met 7 times in total between then and getting into another lockdown in November. During this time, they built a robot, strategized designed, and built extra attachments.
Team 4047: Fitnovators
They did not have time to program the robot before they went into virtual-only mode. They used that time to prepare for other aspects of FLL such as Innovation Research while waiting to hear back about lockdown relaxation rules. But unfortunately, they couldn’t meet in person. By January, they decided to practice for robot games virtually, by writing programs remotely and collaborating virtually. By mid-February 2021, with lockdown rules restricting them from practicing in person, they continued preparing for the Qualifying event virtually. Two team members decided to practice the entire team’s robot-run, a week before competition day.
They practiced for about 6 hours, in total, spread over three days, and were able to showcase a decent robot game score in 300s for the event. We need to look at this in contrast with a regular normal season, where the teams would have practiced for about 100+ hours before they go for the competition.
Kids were excited to see they were able to make progress in such a short time with their robot game and gave their 100%, preparing for their judging session. They did an awesome job, explaining all they have learnt during this FLL season, and how their team activities helped them overcome COVID fatigue. They learnt their advancement to provincials on a Saturday in late Feb/early March 2021, during the live broadcast of the tournament on twitch.tv. They are super excited. They are taking a week’s break and will start regrouping for provincials.
At Zebra Robotics, all the coaches are so proud of these kids, who stepped up to face the challenge given the constraints. Participating and learning are important for us, winning awards is icing on the cake. We look forward to working together in the coming weeks.
This blog was written by FLAME-X team member Vishal Prakash, who has participated in two FLL seasons, for team Astroneers and FLAME-X. His team won awards at regionals and advanced to provincials.
The 2019-20 FLL season proved to be a very eventful and fun experience for my team and I. FLL is a competition that utilizes Lego Ev3 robotics to advocate for problems in the world. This year’s topic was called City Shaper and it centers around all the problems in the world relating to construction. There are 3 components to FLL: Robotics, Project, and Core Values.
Flame-X members – L to R – Vishal, Samir, Ethan, Haris, Ishaan, and Praneeth
FLAME-X
ROBOTICS
In the Robotics component, the FLL team is supposed to build an Ev3 robot that has to complete a set of given challenges that are construction themed. Once each challenge is completed, a certain amount of points will be given to the team depending on the challenge. The building and programming can be done before-hand, and the robot only has to complete the challenges correctly on the day of the competition. Teams are also required to go in front of judges and present their robot, their game strategy, and how they built the attachments and programmed the robot. The judges evaluate the teams on how efficiently they built and coded the robot and also how they complete their challenges.
PROJECT
The Project component of FLL required much more time and work as well as a lot of perseverance and teamwork. The FLL team is supposed to research a problem related to the given topic, find a feasible solution for it, and then present it to the judges on the day of the competition. After looking at a lot of imminent problems relating to the theme, our team chose to research fires due to household appliances, especially stoves. We chose this problem because we found that there was not a good solution and that this problem was actually pretty big, especially in the older houses. After doing research on the problem, we came up with a solution. We called our solution Project F.L.A.M.E (Fire is Lame And Must be Extinguished). It will be attached over the stove and it utilizes thermal imaging, motion sensors, a smart plug, and also an IoT (Internet of Things) system. This system will monitor the motion in the house near the stove using the motion sensor. The thermal imaging will constantly be monitoring the temperature of the stove and if it exceeds a certain amount, the motion sensor will check to see if there is any motion nearby. If there is, the IoT will send a notification to the owner’s phone telling them to immediately turn off the phone. If there was not any motion, the IoT will make the smart plug cut the power to the stove and send a notification to the owner’s phone. After we found a good solution, we decided to build a prototype.
To present our project, we decided to do a skit where a father and son come back to see their house burned down as they had left their stove on. A firefighter recommends them to a group of scientists that are building the F.L.A.M.E. Then everyone goes back in time to see what would have happened if the F.L.A.M.E was monitoring the stove and it overheated. The F.L.A.M.E would have sent a notification to the dad’s phone and the skit ends. A team only has 5 minutes to present their project, so we had to adjust our skit while also making sure we managed to say everything we wanted to say.
CORE VALUES
The Core Values component of FLL represents the teamwork and sportsmanship shown by teams. Judges will constantly be walking around, monitoring us and checking how we act outside of the judging sessions and robot runs. In addition to that, we have to go in front of judges and do an activity that they give us. They check to see how we communicate with each other and how we make decisions as a team.
THE REGIONALS
The regional competition for the Peel Region happened at Rick Hansen Secondary School. This is the first level of competition before provincials and nationals. It started early in the day at 7:30 am and ended around 6:00 – 6:30 pm. Once our team got in a set up or table, or pit, with all our things, we went to the opening ceremony that introduced the judges and executives. After this, we had to go to our first judging session, which was Project.
PROJECT JUDGINGSESSION
We went into the judging room, introduced ourselves and began our skit. Overall our skit went very smoothly and we said everything we wanted to say. We then presented our prototype and showed how it worked and began to answer their questions. We answered the questions clearly as the judges were evaluating us on that as well. In fact, answering the judges’ questions is probably the hardest part of the judging sessions.
ROBOTICS & CORE VALUES JUDGING SESSION
After the Project judging, we went to our Robotics judging session. Here we present our robot, which we had named Sparky, and its components. We also talked about our attachments, how they worked, and our code. Similar to the Project session, we answered the judges’ questions. Our final judging session was Core Values. In this session, the judges gave us an activity and a time limit to finish it. The activity was to choose a part of a body and describe how the role you play in the team is similar to how the role that the part of the body you chose plays in the body. Then, we answered the judges’ questions.
After our first set of judging sessions, we waited for them to post the call-backs. Call-backs are for teams that did really well in each of their judging sessions, and it provides them an opportunity to present to a new set of judges for further evaluation and consideration for awards. We ended up getting call-backs for all three components and had to present again. After the judging sessions and lunch, the robot runs began. We had had a few practice runs before but these runs were the ones that would count and decided what place we would place among the teams. Each team gets 3 runs and the best score is the one that is considered. Our best run ended up being our second one where we scored 405 points. We were first place for a long time until another team scored 415 points and ended up finishing first place while we finished second.
Championship
After all the runs were done, they started the awards ceremony. Though we finished second in the robot runs, we ended up coming first place overall and won the Champion’s Award. Three teams advanced to the provincials, which was to be held in the University of Waterloo, we were happy to be one of them.
It is no news that today’s world is technology-driven. And it will remain so for many years to come. As a parent, you should give your child a head start on their journey towards becoming problem solvers. Enrolling them for robotics courses like the ones on offer at Zebra Robotics may just be the easiest way to do this.
If you’re still unsure about how learning robotics can help mold your child into a future innovator, here are a few points that may help:
Boosts creativity
Robotics courses are not just about theory. They allow children to create something they can see, touch, and control. Many children find this exposure invaluable, and it greatly widens their horizons. You’ll be surprised at how fascinated your child would be see their creation come to life.
Developing the right foundation in STEM
The STEM fields boast the fasted growing careers, and they’re showing no signs of slowing down. Expert analysts that even those who specialize in a seemingly unrelated field would need some STEM knowledge to cope with future work demands. Robotics courses are an excellent way to give your children a solid STEM foundation even while they’re trying to figure out what they might be interested in.
A pathway to programming
can all argue that programming is not a basic life skill, yet. However, the pace of the digital revolution is such that it could be hard to survive in future workspaces without knowledge of at least one programming language. Robotics courses help to introduce your kids to the beautiful world of programming and its endless possibilities.
Learning to make the best out of frustration
Learning how to build a functional robot is challenging for anyone. A lot of children become frustrated along the line, and they nurse thoughts about giving up. With some persistence, however, they can make the best out of this feeling and turn it into an innovation. Through this process, they learn the reward of hard work and persistence.
Are you thinking about laying the right groundwork for your child’s future? It would help if you tapped into any of our introductory or comprehensive robotics courses at Zebra Robotics. From Machine and Mechanisms to Moving Models to Introduction to Robot Navigation and Enhanced Robotic Functions, we have all the right courses to spark your child’s interest in Robotics. Get in touch with us today, and we’ll be glad to link you to a workshop or camp close to you.
The spirit of competition is one of those things we are all blessed with as children. But most of us tend to lose this competitive edge as we age. The good thing is, kids hardly ever have an ulterior motive when competing. For them, it’s merely about besting the other party while respecting the rules. And the childhood innocence that radiates during such competitions is a joy to behold.
WRO Junior High
More than the prize, however, kids also get to learn a whole lot from STEM competitions. This is owed to the fact that competitions provide a breath of fresh air. It takes kids away from the rigidity of classes and allows them to express themselves. While doing so, they also learn valuable skills like time management, communication, teamwork, abstract thinking, problem-solving, and so on.
How do we know this?, it is from working and experiencing with kids ourselves, over the last serveral years. As of Jan 2020, Zebra Robotics has fielded over 65 teams, both winning and ‘need-to-work-more’ experiences. The fact is , kids want to work and learn more when they participate in competitions and get new ideas for their robot design.
For STEM competitions to be effective, they should be less about the results and more about the process, just like any other educational endeavor for kids. Children should be taught that although winning is great, the journey is more important. That way, they have a better chance of imbibing the valuable lessons the competitions are set up to teach.
Congratulations on your success in getting accepted for Computer Science in University of Toronto and getting into Dean’s List of Scholars.
How did you get interested in Coding?
My parents found out about Zebra Robotics around 5 years ago and enrolled me into robotics. During the time I was in Robotics I was completely attracted to programming; flash forward a few years and I joined as a student in Java. Initially I struggled with programming but as it was a grade 11 course I had, I had to push myself to learn and somewhere along the line I started to enjoy programming. From there onwards I programmed at every opportunity I got. Eventually my passion for programming took me to pursue computer science and as such I’m a second year Computer Science student.
Rajath far right has been a student of robotics and coding. He started volunteering and eventually teaching at Zebra Robotics.
Tell us a bit about yourself, your hobby and what you’d like to do when you are not working on your school or university work.
University and working a job at Zebra takes up most of my time, that being said in the little free time I have I mostly just watch shows. Additionally, I make sure to exercise on my free time, as to counteract sitting down and working for a few hours.
How long were you a student at Zebra Robotics? What did you like most at Zebra during that time?
I was a student for around 3 years, in between which I started working a part-time job at Zebra. I have been a Robotics and Coding instructor at Zebra for a little more than 3 years. While I was a student, I spent my first year in robotics and my next 2 in competition with a bit of coding mixed in.
If you were to suggest few things to aspiring Computer Science university students, what would you say?
Programming as a whole is quite difficult at first because it’s like learning a whole new language. With perseverance, practice, and sincerity anyone can become a programmer. Once you get over the first hump in programming, there will be many more but every single challenge you accomplish helps fortify your skills. For university preparation, learn what languages are essential at the time (java, python, etc..) and that should give you a good head start for first year university.
