Engineering a Future

Any robot competing in a FIRST Robotics competition needs to have limbs. Like a bat in baseball, the arm of the robot, the limb primarily responsible for generating points in a competition, is essential. There is, of course, the question of how to develop something so essential in a robot. What kind of material should this arm be made of? Should the arm have a claw to grab game pieces, and if so, what kind of shape should that claw be? In robotics, because there is an artful unity between creativity and technical acuity, these questions can sometimes seem endless. That’s why Collegiate’s robotics team, TORCH 5804, brings on astute mentors like Grayson Richmond ’17 and Haley Kellam ’18, both of whom bring helpful outside experience to the construction of a robot. 

During the early ideation process, TORCH team members considered two-by-one tubing to be the best material to use for the robot’s arm. They thought the tubing was sturdy and could withstand the occasional blows the robot would receive as it speeds around the competition arena. As an engineer working on F-16 aircrafts, Richmond understood that an arm fashioned with something more flexible, using more complex geometry, was ideal. With a light touch, and with the perspective of real-world experience, alumni robotics mentors help guide students throughout the constant trial and error involved in bringing a robot to life. 

“My main goal in my work as a mentor is to bring my technical experience — of knowing what works and what doesn’t work — and give that to the students,” Richmond says. “The students have all the ideas, and so all I’m trying to do as a mentor is introduce them to new ways of thinking and let them branch out from there.” 

TORCH had its inaugural season in 2016, when Richmond was a Junior and Kellam was a Sophomore. Although still a burgeoning program at the time, robotics served for both of them as a space that allowed them to explore a gnawing interest. “For me, robotics was an outlet to learn a bunch of the skills that I had been wanting to learn for a while,” says Richmond, who served as TORCH’s team captain in 2016 and 2017. He remembers finding Robotics Program Leaders Dan Bartels and Greg Sesny assembling gear boxes in Sharp Academic Commons his Junior year. It was like stumbling upon a book he had been looking for; it gave him a trove of knowledge that confirmed his passion. “I always liked building things and creating things, but I never knew how I could actually do something productive with that,” he says. “And then I found robotics, and I realized that it was an activity I could pour hours and hours into. Out of those hours I got all of these skills that still benefit me today.” 

For both Kellam and Richmond, their time spent on TORCH served as a sturdy foundation, laying the tracks that allowed them to excel professionally. Working at an architecture firm, Kellam is frequently “thinking in 3-D,” translating a mental image of an object into a tangible, fully formed object. It’s a mode of thinking she’s learned to do ever since Bartels introduced her to AutoCAD, a computer-aided design software used to create 2-D drawings and models. Thinking in 3-D is like a language, she explains, and with an early introduction to that language, it provides a useful skill across any field, whether analyzing structural components or visualizing data. “Having that young base and understanding of AutoCAD has really served me well working in architecture,” she says. “A lot of what I do is figuring out how to document or construct an object and accurately depict it in a drawing. In the Upper School, Mr. Bartels would sit me down and ask me to make certain parts in CAD, which has benefited me and my success in understanding drawings as tools and how to grasp an understanding of working in an environment that requires progressive spatial thinking.” 

When Richmond arrived at Virginia Tech and applied to become a member of BOLT, a design team that manufactures and races high-performance electric motorcycles, there was no question of his engineering capabilities. “When I got to Tech and told the BOLT team I did FIRST Robotics, and I told them I was familiar with all the same tools they work with on motorcycles, they instantly knew I was good enough to be on their team,” Richmond says. “FIRST really was a one-stop shop for so many things I wanted to learn.” That initial foundation opened doors for him; he credits both FIRST and BOLT with helping him land his current job as a project engineer at Lockheed Martin, an aerospace and defense technology research corporation. “My career has been a snowball effect, and robotics is what started it all.” 

Now, as mentors, Kellam and Richmond want to give back to a program that gave them so much. TORCH has grown significantly since its budding years, and Kellam sees it as her responsibility to provide incoming students with the same foundation TORCH gave her. Joining a robotics team can be daunting, especially when more experienced students are operating on parts with dismaying names such as “bracket ribbons” or machines with intimidating initialisms that stand for things like finite element analysis software. Kellam gives students the basic knowledge to help students operate within the team, just as some of her teachers did for her. “I was very much a new student when I was entering robotics, so I relate to students on that level a lot,” she says. “Walking students through how a robot actually works will help set them up for future success.” 

Suggesting alternative materials for a robot, providing an additional perspective on a build, acquainting a student with new tools — these are the small moments in the work of a mentor, but they serve a great purpose. The career paths Kellam and Richmond walk along, both of which began with these small moments at Collegiate, are testaments to the work of mentors. “The most important thing about the robotics program is really just taking all these kids’ interests and giving them the outlet to develop this technical way of thinking at a young age,” Richmond says. “It’s beneficial for everyone. It was certainly beneficial for me.”