Jason Thwaits, Keenan Molner and Maggie Dreyer work on High Desert Droids' robot, “Nine,” which can lift inner tubes up to 12-feet high. The team will take it to compete against other robots later this month at events in Seattle and Portland.

The High Desert Droids Robotics Team, a group of about 27 Mountain View and Bend High school students, will head to Seattle later this week to compete in the FIRST Robotics Competition on Friday and Saturday at Qwest Field Event Center.

The following week, the team will participate in another FIRST robotics competition in Portland, to be held March 25 and 26 at Memorial Coliseum.

The High Desert Droids’ robot for both contests — which should draw in the neighborhood of 100 teams each — is named “e^πi+10,” pronounced “Nine” because that’s what that equation equals. (These seem like bright kids. We’ll take their word for it.)

FIRST stands for “For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.” It’s been called a “varsity sport of the mind” and is the brainchild of Segway inventor Dean Kamen, who co-created the organization to help American kids keep up internationally in the fields of science and math.

Droids team member Keenan Molner, 17, is a Bend High School senior, who among other tasks manages to make sure the Droids adhere to a 128-page rulebook — and that’s without the code documentation, part-data sheets and the instructions for the robot’s control and communication systems, adds Molner.

Each January, FIRST issues its challenge to teams around the world via live broadcast aired on NASA-TV.

Then, teams have six weeks to complete their robots, which must complete assigned tasks against a field of competitors, says Molner, who’s been in the competitive robot world since eighth grade, when he was competing in the affiliated FIRST Lego League.

At the high school level, “The challenges can range in anything from robot basketball, to, last year, it was soccer on a weird field. This year, it’s a version of vertical tic-tac-toe with pool inner tubes,” he says. Once the team knows the nature of the contest, team members “sit down and we say, ‘Well, where do we begin?’ And we just start throwing out ideas.”

The group’s entire robot was first designed by computer, says Molner and the resultant “Nine” is 2-by-3 feet and can reach up to 12 feet high. To see a video of the robot in practice, visit http://url.bb/hddroids.

The robot’s been in the bag, literally, since Feb. 21, when it was sealed up shortly after that video was made. Bagging up the robot prior to competition is one of its many rules.

“It’s to make it fair for all the teams,” Molner says. “(With) real-world engineering, you’re going to be under that time crunch, and not enough money. Too many things you have to go through and not enough time.”

Kim Thwaits serves as lead mentor to the group. She’s the mother of one the more active students in Droids, Mountain View senior Jason Thwaits, who did much of Nine’s hands-on design work.

Though there are a number of awards on the line, Thwaits says the FIRST competitions are very much about cooperation among teams. In fact, according to the official FIRST site, FIRST cofounder Woodie Flowers coined the term “Gracious Professionalism.”

“Gracious Professionalism is part of the ethos of FIRST,” the site goes on to say. “It’s a way of doing things that encourages high-quality work, emphasizes the value of others and respects individuals and the community.”

In addition to learning about robotics and computer programming, there are opportunities for kids to learn about marketing, Web design, public outreach and more, says Thwaits.

About half the kids in High Desert Droids participated in Lego Robotics at a younger age, says Thwaits. “We get a lot of misfits and stuff, people who don’t fit in anywhere else. And so they may not even be that interested in robots, but there’s a lot of areas you can work on, so it’s not all the Lego nerds.”

To kids interested in robotics, Molner says, “Do it! Join the team, whether you join at the high school level or elementary school level with the Lego Robotics. You learn so much. You really apply what you learn in school, you make great friends, you kind of see what’s possible for high school minds and it helps you decide in the future.

“For example, I know for sure that I’m going to go into a tech field. I’m thinking right now that it’s either going to be math, chemistry or electrical engineering. FIRST has really helped me make up my mind about that.”

Help the Droids

Each year, the High Desert Droids must raise $25,000 to build their robot for competition. According to Kim Thwaits, the group is about $2,300 short of that goal. Donations can be sent to MVHS-Robotics, 2755 N.E. 27th St., Bend, OR 97701.

Contact: www.team753.com or e-mail robotics@bend broadband.com.