When I was offered the opportunity to chat with serial inventor and entrepreneur Dean Kamen about kids and robotics, I had two reactions. The first one was, “Hell, yeah, I want to talk to Dean Kamen!” I’m an engineer, after all, and while Kamen never actually completed college, he’s still the engineer’s engineer. The second one was, “But aren’t school-level robotics competitions pretty much the norm everywhere in the U.S.?” It turns out I was dead right with my first reaction—we had a marvelous discussion. But I was more than a bit off the mark with the second one. And that’s what Kamen wants to fix next.
The focus of our discussion was FIRST (it’s an acronym: For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), the non-profit Kamen founded in 1989 to promote STEM education. It was early in Kamen’s career, but he’d already founded and sold AutoSyringe, a company that produced and marketed the insulin pump he’d invented in college. He’d also established DEKA Research and Development Corp., which works on robotic solutions for mobility for the disabled, and which he still runs today. (He would go on to invent the iBot self-balancing multi-terrain mobility device, the Segway scooter, and the Slingshot, a water purifier based on a modified Stirling engine that runs on almost any combustible fuel.)
Kamen’s early experiences showed him the need for more and better technical education for young people. “Schools need to stop their daycare approach, with kids in rows doing rote learning,” he said. “We need more activities that bring teams together to do exciting things. Sports are justified with those ideas, but we need other stuff that’s appealing to all kids.” FIRST was his answer.
FIRST is focused on youth between the ages of four and eighteen. “It’s about building skills for a career and inspiring all kids to get excited about excelling at those career skills,” Kamen explained. “We created a sport as exciting as every other—but the only one where every kid on every team has the chance to turn pro.”
Here are the main things you should know about the competitions. They’re ultra-high-energy events with kids from every category of diversity you want to name (many of whom have experienced rejection elsewhere because they’re nerds, or aren’t star athletes, or don’t “fit in”). They’re all working together (teams helping each other, yes—and teams helping other teams too), having a ball, competing with robots they built themselves with every bit as much intensity as the high school football team at a state championship. And gaining valuable skills along the way.
FIRST features several different programs and competitions that vary by age and focus area. They include the FIRST LEGO League (pre-K through middle school), the FIRST Tech Challenge (middle and high school), and the FIRST Robotics Competition (high school). Each one focuses at least in part on robotics. But, as Kamen points out, “It’s not about the robots. We’re not using kids to build robots—we’re using robots to build kids. FIRST is modeled after things that work.”The numbers are impressive. “We had 23 teams in year one,” Kamen said. About three decades later, in the 2019-2020 season, there were more than 679,000 students from 110 countries participating in 3,700 events, with the help of over 320,000 adult volunteers who serve as coaches, mentors and judges.
A big driver of that growth has been corporate sponsorship, which includes about 200 of the Fortune 500, along with many smaller companies, educational and professional institutions, foundations and individuals. For the 2021-2022 season, Qualcomm is sponsoring FIRST FORWARD, a transportation-themed partnership involving all the above-mentioned FIRST programs. “I think what Dean has built is amazing,” said Angela Baker, Head of Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability at Qualcomm. “All the kids love him—when he shows up at a competition, it’s just like having Michael Jordan there.”
For Baker, there’s a strong business rationale to the partnership. “We really need a lot of talented, young people to come work at Qualcomm, people with good critical thinking, innovation and teamwork skills. In FIRST, kids are exposed to those concepts and to the companies looking for them. They learn about invention, and about the engineering and design processes. They work on teams where they’re all assigned roles, just like in business. Our employees serve as mentors for FIRST teams, and we’ve already hired a number of FIRST alums. They’re not afraid to speak up to leadership or other functions. It’s a no-brainer for us to partner with FIRST.”
That’s similar to what energizes volunteers at the local level: to provide education and training for school-age children in a way that challenges and motivates them. I didn’t have to look far to learn more about that, because I happen to live right smack in a hotbed for robotics. Michigan is a top robotics state, and my town, Grandville, has one of its leading programs. “We’re probably one of the top five programs in the world,” said Doug Hepfer, coach for Grandville’s robotics program, the RoboDawgs. (Having a world-class program in my hometown explains why that second reaction I mentioned earlier, about my believing well-established robotics programs were the norm everywhere, was so off-base.)
“We’re part of a number of different competitions now,” Hepfer continued. “But Dean was the pioneer, and FIRST was first. Grandville formed its first team in 1998, one of the first 300 teams out there. I got involved in 2006, and the technology has evolved fast. Now there are dozens of robotics programs, and it’s all because Dean had the vision that kids could do this and enjoy it and benefit from it. Now Grandville has 137 teams, and 270 adult volunteers.”
For Hepfer, a retired partner from Deloitte Consulting who now runs Hepfer & Associates, PLLC, a direct-selling and multi-level marketing consultancy, his motivation comes from the impact on students. “Kids learn about the unit circle and radians in math class and they don’t care—they just go through the motions. But when they build a robotic boat that’s steered in radians, and knowing about them is the difference between winning and losing, now they care! I’ve seen kids go on to be engineers, and girls going into science and chemistry where they didn’t have an interest before, all because of what they’ve been exposed to in robotics.”
Baker agreed. “I’ve seen kids who have no engineers in their family or perhaps have never met an engineer get exposed to these concepts through FIRST, and then go on to study a STEM field and become an engineer, or a patent attorney, or a chemist!”
Kamen’s next focus is on making more communities like mine. “I want to get everyone else where Grandville is by giving every school a FIRST team,” he said. “If every state embraced this like Michigan does, it would be a very different picture. I want to convince all kids it’s like every other sport, but with two huge advantages: first, other sports have a very unfair distribution of opportunities based on height, weight, sex, and physical ability, but every kid can be successful in FIRST. Second, careers! There are internships for FIRST students at 3,700 companies, and our 2021 scholarship program includes 200 providers who, among them, are making $80 million available to FIRST participants.”
Hepfer welcomes newcomers. “We need teams to compete with! Competition is what makes it real, and creates the fire that lights kids up.” He says the keys to starting a program are desire and funding. “It’s not hard to do. It just requires vision. We helped get teams started up in Calgary—we had video conferences with them, and even shipped them robot parts. Now they have 80 teams. We are willing and able to help whoever wants to set up a program. You have to look for ways to fund things. We had a tough funding year last year because our corporate sponsorship dried up. We collected returnable cans and bottles [worth ten cents apiece] that were building up during the pandemic instead. We thought we’d make $5,000, maybe $10,000 total. Instead we’re getting 40,000 cans a month!
“And for new teams, there are state grants here in Michigan to fund them for the first year and half. You have to look at all your options.”
Kamen challenged the business community to help more as well. “If business leaders are serious about solving the equity problem, they should be focused on getting this entire generation of kids prepared for a tech future,” he said. “The most valuable thing this country can do for stimulus is to invest in kids. If we put a lot in, we’ll get a whole lot more out. FIRST may be fun, but don’t let that fool you. It’s part of the solution businesses need.”
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