FSM: The Beginning

1:23:44 hours GMT. Let there be light: and there was light. A great fireball illuminates the night followed seconds later by the sound of a thunderous explosion. A catastrophe of unknown origin and extent has occurred in Unit #4 of the Ukrainistan nuclear reactor complex. An autonomous aerial robot (mother ship) carrying sensors and a miniature autonomous flying sub vehicle has been launched from a safe location (three kilometers distant from the complex) to enter the control room of Unit #2, identifiable by the Ukrainistani national seal over the main entrance. The mother ship has successfully located Unit #2 and has identified an opening in the building into which its aerial robotic sub vehicle can be launched.

On the last day of August 2008, days before 11th grade would begin, I stumbled into the above challenge and decided to post it to Facebook. My note on that year’s International Aerial Robotics Competition – the premier aerial robotics competition in the world – soon went online, spurring a discussion that would foreshadow much of my engineering work that year.

The organizers continued with their description of the competition:

This small, fully autonomous aerial robot must now find and enter the control room to provide a picture of the main control panel gauges and switch positions so experts can see why Unit #2 has not shut down and assess the potential for a meltdown of this unit. The reconnaissance mission must be completed within 10 minutes from insertion into the building due to expected radiation-induced failures within the aerial robot’s systems. The aerial robotic sub vehicle must transmit its picture(s) through the concrete walls of Unit #2 to the mother ship waiting outside whereupon the pictures will be relayed back to the human investigative teams outside the safety perimeter three kilometers away.

The online discussions began. What kind of device could fly into such an environment and complete the challenge? How difficult would building it be? And, given the resources of a hypothetical college team, how hard would it be to win?

Meanwhile, a lower-key competition called Tech Challenge began, which involved a challenge for students from fifth grade through high school. The moment that year’s challenge was published, I heard from my friends on the Funky Shiitake Mushrooms engineering team.
As a group, they stood out as one of the few engineering groups that was an even split by gender and without a team leader. Their team dynamics set them apart from other high school teams that I had gotten to know; they got things done because individuals would step up and use their strengths. Even though only two of their four members were experienced in engineering, they had an amazingly successful first year in which they won grants and a Judges’ Choice award at the Tech Challenge. It was clear that their diversity to made them quite effective.

This year, the Tech Challenge problem was called “Explore the Volcano”. FSM would have to build a device to deliver ping-pong balls to the top of a model volcano without touching its sides, simulating the delivery of instrumentation to a real volcano. There was a consensus that the best solution would be an aerial teleoperated robot. Here it was: a first stepping stone towards the IARC, a challenge that involved much of the mechanical work that would go into an IARC-type robot.

It was the perfect opportunity. I started working with the Funky Shiitake Mushrooms as an external consultant, sharing blueprints and sketches with their electronics specialist Eric. We met every day walking from class to class, exchanging brainstorms and chatting about the latest in aerial robotics. Soon, we came up with a plan.

We would build a hybrid airship, a novel type of blimp combining propellers and helium envelopes to provide lifting power. This design would be easier to control than the conventional blimps and helicopters we expected our competitors to field, but at the same time it would be able to outmaneuver them. We thought this would be a winning idea, and after a discussion with the team the decision was made. This was it – this design would give us our best shot at Tech Challenge yet.

There was one last thing to sort out. I was a designer for this team, but I wasn’t quite a member yet. I had worked with a couple of the team members before on things related to engineering and Tech Challenge, but my being a real member of the team came down to a 2-2 vote. Two leaned in favor because of the new skills I would bring to the team. Two leaned against because, as we all acknowledged, this would change the team dynamic and there was no way we could predict the results.

Actually, the vote was a check in their team’s procedures that even I was glad about. FSM had voted to maintain their team as a four-member group several times before, even though they had started out as a chain of friends of friends. Being one of the Mushrooms meant being a good fit and serious commitment, which we would grow to value during that year.

A few weeks later, it was all figured out. I joined the Funky Shiitake Mushrooms after hours of deliberation on their part. This way, they would absorb a potential competitor. FSM would fill a void for me, too. I had parted ways with another small engineering team just months before, the FIRST Tech Challenge Team 548, after realizing we weren’t the right fit for each other. Both FSM and 548 were close-knit engineering teams, but the Mushrooms held philosophy discussions while 548 had LAN parties; the former was a colorful and multitalented group that spanned social groups, while the latter was based on similarity and drew from the friends of its founders. I can’t say one was better than the other, but they were two very different kinds of teams.

So, I left the structured world of FIRST for a series of slightly more frisky local competitions, starting with Tech Challenge. FSM was a group that I felt more at home with, and now we had the five members that would carry us through a year in which we would turn into Mission San Jose High’s engineering dream team. I’m glad to have joined them.

Catherine, David, Eric, and Rex, it’s been amazing working with you guys. Thinking back to the beginning when we got together, I’m happy that we’ve stayed together and gotten so far.