Army engineers champion future STEM talent at massive RoboCon event

PICATINNY ARSENAL, N.J. - Nearly 60,000 people, including students, educators, mentors, and engineers at the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Armaments Center at Picatinny Arsenal, packed the Bridgewater Commons Mall on Sept. 27 and 28 for the region’s largest public robotics event, known as RoboCon.

Organized by local FIRST Robotics teams and supported by volunteers and sponsors, the two-day extravaganza invites families and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) enthusiasts of all ages to experience a glimpse into the future.

FIRST Robotics refers to the programs and competitions organized by For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), a global non-profit organization founded in 1989. It uses the excitement of sports to inspire and engage students in STEM through hands-on robotics challenges. Students work in teams with mentors to design, build, and program robots to compete with each other.

The FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) challenges high school teams to design, build, and program robots to play a new game each year. This season’s challenge, REEFSCAPE, tasked teams with designing robots that could restore and populate a futuristic ocean reef.

Using vision systems, autonomous navigation, and precise manipulator control, each robot had to gather coral-shaped game pieces and place them on multi-level reef structures to earn points.

24 FRC teams spanning four states participated in this year’s Robot Rumble, an elimination style tournament held in the center of the mall for all to witness.

The Armaments Center, one of the Army’s premier research and development facilities, employing thousands of workers in technical fields, assisted in sponsoring the Robocon event with the goal of fostering and increasing STEM interests in the next generation.

For Max Rutka, an Armaments Center mechanical engineer who provided support to the event, the program holds a special meaning.

“I volunteer because I know what FIRST and FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) programs did for me and what doors it opened for me,” he said. “I want to be able to provide younger students those same opportunities I got from this program.”

Rutka said the FIRST events he participated in during his high school years helped pave the way for his career at Picatinny Arsenal.

“The calculations we did as well as building the actual robots during the build season really intrigued me and led me to go to school for mechanical engineering at Rowan University,” Rutka said.

“After I finished my degree, I went back to my high school to mentor the team. My team was and still is sponsored by Picatinny STEM and opened my eyes to a possible career with the Department of Defense at Picatinny.”

The Picatinny STEM program supports public and private schools, colleges and universities with no-cost assistance, professional development training, new instructional equipment, and monetary and advisory support to student robotics teams. It also offers engineer mentors, sponsorship of student competitions, and opportunities to visit scientists and engineers in their laboratories, where students get a first-hand look at how professionals rise to meet STEM challenges.

This STEM education outreach is custom tailored to meet the specific needs of individual schools. It has already positively impacted tens of thousands of students and hundreds of teachers in New Jersey with knowledge of cutting-edge technologies and the inevitable changes they will bring to education, employment, and daily life in the 21st Century.