Tesco Controls and Swerve Robotics are teaming up in Bothell, WA to provide real-world experience for students, while providing engineers with a way to give back.
Michael Smith, P.E., Tesco Controls Washington Regional Lead, recently collaborated on an article with Heidi Lovett and Sara Jones of Swerve Robotics. Published in the August 2021 edition of Control magazine, the article is titled Tesco Controls, Swerve Robotics team up to inspire students for STEM. The article describes how Tesco’s Bothell, WA office has partnered with FIRST LEGO League and Swerve Robotics to help students learn and compete in robotics competitions, enriching young lives and preparing students for future success.
Reaching Youth Through Robotics
There is great concern throughout society, and rightfully so, about the need to reach a new generation of young people and encourage them to become engineers, scientists, and makers. For the industrial automation sector, an aging workforce and disproportionally low number of new skilled workers is a particular issue.
Tesco Controls is answering the call and serving the community by providing an office space ‘Build Zone’ and supporting robotics competitions, empowering 6- to 14-year-old group of students to accomplish real world tasks of designing, constructing, programming, and operating robots.
The FIRST core values emphasize teamwork, respect for others, learning technical and soft skills, community involvement, and fostering a culture of equity, diversity, and inclusion as reflected in the organization’s mission statement:
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- Discovery: We explore new skills and ideas.
- Innovation: We use creativity and persistence to solve problems.
- Impact: We apply what we learn to improve our world.
- Inclusion: We respect each other and embrace our differences.
- Teamwork: We are stronger when we work together.
- Fun: We enjoy and celebrate what we do!
Swerve Robotics
Swerve Robotics is a community-based group of adult coaches, helping students to perform their own project management, problem solving, and technical work to solve competition challenges. The program encourages the students and provides a way for technical, engineering, and others to volunteer in their communities.
The Tesco Build Zone
Tesco provides some permanent office space as a Build Zone, so coaches and students can focus on innovating, while avoiding time-consuming set-up and tear-down activities. The space is an ideal location for exposing students to science and engineering, and it provides an area for meaningful interaction with mentors. This space was set up to provide distancing, and it has been especially beneficial during COVID-19, an issue prompting many other teams to meet as online-only.
Brainstorming with MINDSTORMS
Teams use the LEGO MINDSTORMS programming platform, which is similar to an industrial programmable logic controller (PLC) and therefore provides relevant, real-world experience. Sensors are wired to input tags, logic is executed, and controlled devices are connected to output tags.
Engaging in “Coopertition“
The crowning moment for all the teambuilding, designing, programming, and development is when these students participate in cooperative competition—coopertition— with their peers at the annual contests. Teams are given ‘missions’ and must decide how to accomplish them in the two-and-a-half minutes allocated to run robot tasks.
Industry and Innovator Partnership
Partnerships between organizations like Tesco and Swerve Robotics are critical to open doors for young innovators by providing avenues for industry professionals to share their expertise. This past summer, Tesco hired students from Swerve Robotics as interns, and the staff was excited to work with these budding engineers. Tesco is proud to serve the community in this way, and it looks forward to what the future will bring in these types of endeavors.
Tesco Controls Inc. is a certified member of the Control System Integrators Association (CSIA).
Authors
Michael Smith, P.E., is the TESCO Washington regional lead. He is a registered controls engineer and certified software developer with more than 26 years of experience in the planning, design, testing, implementation and operations of control systems for water and wastewater treatment plants and associated infrastructure. Heidi Lovett is the founder and executive director for Swerve Robotics. She formed a FIRST Lego League team for her sons and discovered the life-changing fun of FIRST. She has a bachelor’s degree in theatre. Sara Jones joined Swerve Robotics as a parent four years ago, and has eight years of experience with FIRST. She very quickly became involved and joined the board as well as becoming the FLL Director to help grow and develop the program.
