When Dillon Grimm's son decided to get involved in the White Lake Robotics K-12 program, he thought it would be fun to spend time together by volunteering to be an assistant coach and was intrigued by the program's use of Lego bricks in its work, as he enjoys the pastime. However, he was clear with Jen Jura, who coaches at the high school level and oversees the program, that he didn't feel qualified to be given the authority of a head coach, having no experience at all with the robotics field.
Yet when the team roster was revealed a few weeks later, there Grimm's name was, listed as the head coach for the fourth and fifth-grade HydroSharks team. Convinced there was a mistake, Grimm asked Jura what had happened and learned his inclusion was intentional.
"I said to her, 'You realize I know nothing about what's about to go down?'" Grimm laughed. "I had seven kids on the team that first year and I didn't know what I was doing, and my assistant coach didn't know what he was doing."
Grimm eventually figured things out, and after a few years at the helm, the HydroSharks team made history this year, qualifying for the state meet for the first time in its 10 years of existence. Seven team members worked together, meeting twice a week starting in August, to earn a fourth-place overall finish at a regional event in Grand Rapids in December. At the Jan. 11 state meet in Mason, the HydroSharks placed 25th out of 48 teams.
"It was amazing," Grimm said of the moment the team realized what it had done at regionals. "I don't think it really sunk in until the third or fourth time we told them that they were the first elementary school team to move on...I turned to look (after the announcement) and all the kids were whooping and hollering and the parents were excited and our coaches' jaws were on the floor. I think the kids were ecstatic. I hope they're proud of their accomplishment."
The HydroSharks are part of the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) robotics program, which encourages young people to get involved in STEM education.
"This organization, FIRST Robotics, starts with the preschool and kindergarten through third grade programs, so most of the kids who were on our team had been doing robotics for a few years," Jura said. "The fourth and fifth grade level is a lot harder. At the K-3 level, they have a topic, they talk about the topic, they build a Lego project with movable parts, and they do some coding. At the 4-5 grade level, it becomes a competition."
Each year, teams compete in a robot game and an Innovation Project that fits a particular theme; this year's theme was Deep Dive, so the games related to the oceans. The FIRST Lego League (FLL) played a game called Submerged, which requires students to build obstacles and mechanisms related to underwater exploration.
To accomplish the objective, students constructed a robot using a Lego Spike Prime set, then coded it using a program called Python, which enabled the robot to perform various tasks. (Grimm noted that coaches talked to the students about how Python is the same coding system used to build many of the games they themselves play on their tablets or phones.)
The students also constructed attachments to help the robot complete these tasks. As part of the game, students have two and a half minutes to accomplish as many missions as they can - there are about 15 in total - each of which earns the team points.
You might not think of robotics as something that can be made accessible to kindergarteners, but Grimm said "word block coding" is simple enough to understand for kids that age, and over time in the program they grow more familiar with the concept. By the time kids get to fourth grade, they are a little more advanced.
"The first month we meet is just, 'This is the (competition),' and we explain what's going on and we gauge where the kids are in their understanding of engineering, programming and research," Grimm said. "We guide the kids into groups where they're at similar levels and pair them together."
Also part of the competition is the interview process. After a strong performance in the FLL game - the students placed fifth of 32 teams - judges interviewed the students about their robot's design, and the students gave a short presentation about how they solved the missions, including problem-solving techniques used when the first plan didn't always work.
For the Innovation Project, students choose a problem that's related to the Deep Dive theme, then develop innovative solutions to the problem. The project includes a presentation and a Q&A session with judges.
For the HydroSharks' presentation, they used a Jeopardy format, using the famous game show to describe to the judges their solutions to the mental health challenges faced by submariners while doing their research in submersibles. Their solution was a tablet with apps like Hydro-Breathing and Hydro-Music for relaxation, and Hydro-Call to alleviate loneliness. The team solicited feedback from a Trinity Health social worker for the apps and did a test run of its Jeopardy presentation at the U.S.S. Silversides museum in Muskegon in the weeks leading up to the state meet.
Grimm credited the students on the team for coming up with and executing the Jeopardy theme and the tablet/app presentation; the team received a rating of Outstanding at the state competition for their communication of the theme.
At regionals, the HydroSharks received a perfect 3/3 score in each category of the rubric for the design interview portion of the project and all but one category of the Innovation Project, with judges noting their use of the program's core values: Teamwork, inclusion, impact, fun, discover and innovation. Those strong scores earned them the fourth-place overall finish.
"We assisted them with some ideas and reeled them in when they went way overboard with their ideas, but the kids took it to heart," Grimm said. "It wasn't like a school project where the teacher said, 'This is what you research and this is the curriculum.' It was their idea to focus on mental health for submariners and it was their idea for the Jeopardy game. To see them find that their solution was an incredible solution, I think they took away the excitement of, 'We came up with this idea.'"
The thing that perhaps most excites Grimm, Jura and others involved in the robotics program is its application of skills kids can use to pursue successful careers later in life. A FIRST Robotics credo is that this is a sport of the mind, "and everyone can go pro." Jura said past students she's worked with have gone on to work at NASA, intern at the NSA, work on building satellites, or in the case of Jura's daughter, earn full scholarships to the University of Michigan to study mechanical engineering. Jura even relayed a story about a student of hers who was essentially homeless, living on friends' couches, but after their time in the program ended up joining the U.S. Navy to be a submariner.
Some HydroSharks team members got so into what they were doing, said Grimm, that they received Arduino or Raspberry Pi robots as Christmas gifts so they could continue diving into coding.
And it isn't just practical skills kids pick up in the program, but maybe just as importantly, life skills too.
"One of the biggest things kids learn in robotics is how to fail," Jura said. "How many times did things not go the way they wanted? Either the presentation was too long and they had to shorten it, or the robot was supposed to push this lever and it missed. So one of the things they learn is how to try again. Often with little kids we let them win at games and (after we decide) we can't let them win, they realize life isn't so much fun. But when you're doing something as cool as robotics, it's a different type of environment."
