Going Global
This Summer, five BHS girls, with one month’s notice and one robotics kit, proudly represented Bermuda at the FIRST Global 2017 Robotics competition in Washington DC.
The team finished ahead of the United States, Canada, Russia and Great Britain on their way to a respectable 59th out of 163 teams and was one of only six all-girls teams in the competition - ending the competition as the top female team. The FIRST Global challenge, in its inaugural year, addressed the global issue of access to clean water, by building a model river and having the teams race to clear it of contaminants, using their robots to accomplish this goal. More than one billion people do not have access to clean water and over half of them are children. In each round of the competition, three teams worked together to remove as many contaminants from the river as possible, as another alliance of three teams sought to do the same thing on the other side of the river. Contamination was simulated with a constant stream of plastic balls, blue being clean water and orange being contaminants. Team Bermuda consisted of Yulia Isaeva ‘19, the captain and driver; Katie Grainge ‘20, coder and driver; Ashlyn Lee ‘20, spokesperson and tactician; Kameron Young ‘19, coder and back-up driver and Nadhiri Simons-Worrell ‘19, back-up driver. They were accompanied by Maths teacher, Paula Harrison. The team overcame many challenges such as creating a robot from scratch and only having one month to do so, when most teams had 6 months. However, through a combination of hard work, commitment and perseverance, they pulled through and created a robot that met the competition’s challenge. “Each of the team members brought their own special abilities which enabled the improvement and overall success of the team,” says Kameron. “Yulia and Katie were skilled drivers who worked
16 Torchbearer Fall 2017
together to make sure that the robot could maneuver, eject the balls, and escape the ‘flood’ at the end of each match. “Ashlyn was an amazing tactician and spokesperson while Nadhiri brought insight when it came to repairing the robot after each competition. I was especially excited when my Spanish skills came in handy when talking to some of the teams who did not understand English.” The process of building the robot
resulted in the girls becoming closer, which ultimately aided them when it came to
Big impact: Students from 157 countries took part in the inaugural event.
trusting and relying on each other during the heat of competition. The team also received invaluable advice and mentorship from Dave Mallon of MA Consulting, Andy Newton and Chelito Desilva from Validus, Veronica Dunkerley and Pekka Antonin from Softbank Team Japan and Dave Greenslade. Financial sponsorship was given by Trunomi and Argus, with construction of a practice playing field contributed by D&J Construction. BHS provided logistical support for the team. When the team landed in Washington, DC, it quickly settled in that they were representing Bermuda. They also realised that as an all girls’ team, the other teams and press would be keeping a close eye on their progress. Because engineering is widely thought of as a male career, each
of the all-girls’ teams had to work to prove that they were just as skilled and prepared as the other teams.
“Many of the teams told me that the diversity of the competition allowed them to meet new people and experience new cultures,” says Kameron. “No matter which team I asked, the first thing they said was how proud and overjoyed they were to be representing their country.” It turned out that most of the other
robots were much larger than the Bermuda team’s robot and the girls had to figure out how to work around the robots while simultaneously collecting the correct balls. Unfortunately, the team was not always successful and their robot was knocked over multiple times by other teams’ robots. The team sacrificed weight and bulkiness
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