Think robotics is for engineering and math students? Think again! Consumers Energy has support First Robotics for a number of years. Listen as Megan Hayward and Kevin Furlong talk about the excitement and teamwork that surrounds these competitions.
William Krieger
The views and opinions of the guests of the Me You Us podcast do not represent the views and opinions of Consumers Energy.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Me You Us, a wellbeing podcast. It’s another wellbeing Wednesday here at Consumers Energy. And I’m your host Bill Krieger. Today we have two very special guests to talk about robotics. My first guest is Megan Hayward. She is the director of enterprise resources and workforce planning. It’s a whole lot of words. So Megan, please introduce yourself.
Megan
Thanks, Bill, really glad to be here today. And as you shared, I’m Megan Hayward, newly the director of Enterprise Resource and Workforce Planning, which is a wonderful space to work across the organization, learn a lot about what resources we have today and what resources we might need tomorrow. But additionally, I have a really cool role at Consumers Energy, where I do the outreach for robotics. So I get to help map out the strategy for Consumers Energy, and the work we do with robotics teams around the state of Michigan. So I’m really excited to be here today and excited to be here with my fellow coworker too.
William Krieger
Well, good. And speaking of your fellow coworker, that would be Kevin Furlong, he is a senior engineer with EMS. And that does not stand for emergency medical services, I understand. So, Kevin, if you’d introduce yourself, we’ll go ahead and get the conversation started.
Kevin
Sure. Thanks, Bill. I’m Kevin Furlong, I work in the EMS applications team in the grid management department. Essentially, what we do is work with controls for all of our field equipment, including substations, switching devices and generators. So we mostly support the lead System Control Organization and the Merchant Operations group.
William Krieger
So you might know a couple of things about robotics anyway. Well, good. And let’s talk about that a little bit. As Megan alluded to, and as I talked a little bit about in the introduction there, we’re here to talk about robotics. And FIRST Robotics is one of the things that comes first to my mind, because we talk about it a lot here at Consumers Energy. So normally, we’re told to lead with the why. But today, we’re going to lead with what, so the audience understands exactly what it is we’re here to talk about. So Kevin, can you talk a little bit about FIRST Robotics? And what is that?
Kevin
Sure. So there are two specific programs I’m involved in, there is FIRST Tech Challenge FTC, and FIRST Robotics Competition FRC. They’re very similar, but they target two different age groups. One is for middle school students and the others for high school students, at least in the state of Michigan. And really, the big difference with the two of them is the scale and the depth. But at the end of the day, they’re really just robust programs to build the technical skills of high school and middle school students. And to get them involved and exposed with engineering careers. What’s really cool if you actually go to any of the competitions, is they are massive, full of energy, just very exciting and busy events. It’s really hard to find anything else you can compare it to, it’s kind of like the busiest most exciting track meet you’ve ever been to just usually 20 or 30 schools, hundreds of kids, hundreds of parents, very busy events.
William Krieger
I almost would compare it to like a swim meet. Because all that sound is inside of a building.
Kevin
You can hear like the roar outside of it. It’s crazy. It’s really something.
William Krieger
So definitely something to check out. Well, let’s back up a little bit and go a little bit more in depth on the two programs that you talked about. So FTC was the first one that you mentioned. And exactly what is that? Who is it for? And what are we teaching people with that?
Kevin
Yeah, so FTC is for middle school students. So usually, sixth, seventh and eighth graders. And it’s a simplified version of what you get in high school. Essentially, they’re smaller robots that they build, they’re easier to work with like a small subset of parts. So for a beginning team, they can basically buy a kit that has it looks kind of like an old school Erector Set, essentially. And they can take that kit and build the robot that they need. With both programs there’s a new game every year. It’s totally different usually. And within each one, they have to build the robot they need to accomplish certain goals and tasks within each game. So you can use the same kit of parts and in this case, and just kind of rework it every year to meet the goals for that year’s game.
William Krieger
So the games have like you’re building a robot for a specific purpose. Not like the killer bots we see on TV sometimes.
Kevin
Yeah, so the BattleBots comparison is actually brought up a lot. And I think what we do is a bit more interesting because the games are different every year. To the point that, you know, if you brought like the same robot back the next year, it wouldn’t be competitive at all, in FTC or FRC. Whereas in BattleBots, you’ll see a robot-like Tombstone going for, like 16 years straight. So not viable in FIRST Robotics.
William Krieger
Okay, so Kevin, a couple of things. One, I realized how old I was when you said Erector Set. And I knew exactly what, like I had a mental image of what that was and how many times I cut myself on the erector set that I had as a kid. And the other thing is, you can name a robot on BattleBots, which tells me a little something about you.
Kevin
Yeah, well, again, I talk a lot with kids and parents involved in robotics, and a lot of them are very interested in battle bots. So it comes up often.
William Krieger
And I wish the audience could see the excitement on Kevin’s face. I mean, I hope you’re hearing it through his voice. But here’s a guy who’s really excited about what he’s doing. So we talk a little bit about the FRC and now the FTC. It just sounds like it’s just a more advanced version of FRC. Yes.
Kevin
Which there? FRC is a more advanced version of FTC. Yeah. So with FRC, really what happens is we expand the scale and the scope of everything. So the robots are much larger, they’re more powerful. And whereas with FTC, reusing a usually a smaller subset of parts, almost everything in FRC can be custom. So you’ll have well, there’s limits to it too. But you’ll have teams with essentially like custom fabricated, chassis for the robots, whereas that’s it’s much less common in FTC. So the costs scale, everything goes up. But it’s also a lot more work. And as a result, it’s a lot more fun at the end of the day.
William Krieger
Well, could you go through what a competition might look like? What are some of the tasks that the robots have to do? And how are the students like overcoming those tasks?
Kevin
Sure, well, the big thing is in almost every game, there, there’s two sections to it. The first is the autonomous section. And the second is the tele op or the driver control section. So usually, the matches are about two minutes and 30 seconds in the first 15 to 30 seconds, the robot has to control itself, students can’t touch it at all, or touch their controllers at all. And then for the second section, they’re allowed to. But then, as far as the activities in the game, usually there’s a few different scoring elements. So it could be anything from collecting balls or discs and placing them in specific goals, to having like a turntable that has different colors, different colored sections on it. And you have to turn that so that the field detects a certain color. And to make it even more complicated, there’s usually a section at the end of the game called the end game, where certain limits are removed, and you’re able to score in an additional way. So with this year’s game, there was a structure that you could climb. And there’s normally a height limit on how far your robots able to extend, and that was removed at the end of the game. So in the last 30 seconds of the game, you’re able to climb this fairly large structure with your robot.
William Krieger
Well, that all sounds I have to say this sounds exciting. I mean, to put it in perspective, right? This is something that they work on for a long time that’s really a two-and-a-half-minute competition at the end of the day. So a lot of work. And I’ll bet sometimes a two and a half minutes is very fast. And sometimes that two and a half minutes seems to go on forever.
Kevin
Yep. Yeah, yeah. Well, no, it’s definitely very exciting. I can think of a few matches we were in this season where the gap between the last two bars for us on the structure we were climbing, I mean, you’d be on the edge of your seat as a robot, but it was like barely making it over. Or in one case or robot fell off of the structure and what like the you can hear the thud as the robot hits the ground and silence in the auditorium. It’s, it’s really something.
William Krieger
I have got to check this out the next time we do this. You also mentioned that, you know, sometimes we’re trying to appeal to students who might be interested in engineering or interested in the STEM fields. What if I’m one of those students who like I don’t know if I’m interested in engineering or not. Is there a place for me on one of these teams?
Kevin
Yes, so there’s a lot of roles on the teams, it varies based on the size of each team, usually bigger teams are able to do more. And they’ll have more roles for students. But really, the engineering and the technical side is just kind of the base. And on top of that, there’s a lot of room for communications, marketing, and business. So with each team, they can have separate groups for that, or individual students assigned to it. But it’s a critical part of the game. So one way you can actually score points in the overall competitions is by winning awards. And you can do that by having a good marketing and branding for your team. That’s something my team took advantage of, with the help of Greg Stevenson, to win the imagery award. And if you build a good business plan, basically just showing like how you’re bringing in funding for your team and spending it effectively, you can win awards for that – there’s a lot of room. And then one issue that comes up often is if you can interact effectively with other teams, that’s very beneficial. So one aspect of the competition is you’re never competing by yourself. So in FTC, there’s two robots on an alliance. And then FRC, there’s three teams on an alliance. So you’re working with three teams to score points. So it is to your advantage to go talk to the teams, you’re going to be working alongside and figure out a good game plan, figure out what the capabilities of their robot are, and come up with a good strategy for how you’re going to beat the other alliance.
William Krieger
So I’m a military guy, and I’m hearing a lot of teamwork in here, which I like to hear. The other thing I hear, too, is, you know, I know that recently, the governor has talked about what we’re learning in school, and that there needs to be this component of understanding basic economics, and household economics. And it almost sounds like that’s a part of this as well. So for anybody who hears the term robotics and thinks, well, I’m not an engineer, or I’m not a math person. It sounds like there’s room to learn soft skills, teamwork, all of those things, marketing. Sounds like maybe you just have a marketing guy on your team. That’s very helpful as well.
Kevin
Yes, he is very helpful.
William Krieger
Well, good. So you know, that’s a great description of what, and now I’m excited. And maybe you’ll have a team for people who aren’t in high school anymore. I think that might be fun. But let’s talk a little bit about the why. And for that, we’re going to turn to Megan. So Megan when we think about all these things, I mean, it’s exciting. It’s fun to do. I’m sure the kids really dig it. They love doing this kind of stuff. But why are we doing this? Why are we involved? And I know we have been involved for quite some time here at Consumers Energy.
Megan
Yeah. Great question, Bill. So back in about 2013, the senior leadership at Consumers Energy was turned on to first robotics through some of their own students. And as they went to this competition, they realized they’re not just learning STEM skills, they’re learning skills about their community about how to almost run small businesses. And we knew with what we had coming up at the company, and throughout the state, that we wanted to invest in that talent. So Consumers has, since 2013, been a very avid sponsor of not only all robotics, but particularly first robotics as a program. And through this, we’re, you know, seeing talent pipelines develop and economic development around the state as well. So that’s, that’s really the why, but agree it’s also very fun.
William Krieger
Oh, yeah. Well, you talk about talent pipelines. I know that a lot of the discussion we have, especially around diversity, equity and inclusion today is how do we grow those diverse talent pipelines? Not at the point of hire, but well before in grade school and in high school and in college? And it sounds like that’s one of the things that’s coming out of this.
Megan
Yeah. And, you know, some of those teams, as Kevin was referring, you know, some teams, if they have a lot of students and a lot of resources, they might be able to build a robot and even practice more skills beyond just STEM skills. And so Consumers has recognized that in the past, and we want to make sure we can reach students in school areas that maybe don’t have as many resources out of the gate. So we actually do support and sponsor stem labs to help foster that growth and support teams as well. So financially, through volunteers, and through a lot of other forums.
William Krieger
Well, you know, in speaking to a couple of our coworkers, Davina Struck is one of them that comes to mind immediately. She’s an engineer. She went to Michigan State University and when she shares her story she talks about getting to Michigan State and that really not knowing if she was going to be, quote unquote good enough to be there, because the kids that she was with they had 10 to 12 AP classes in their high school and her high school offered, I think she said 2. And so it’s so very important to give those skills to people who may or may not be able to get those through their regular schools. And so the question is, I know that, you know, you talked about building robots, which is not an inexpensive venture at all. How do we support this financially?
Megan
Yep. So we have a few different ways that both Consumers Energy and the Consumers Energy Foundation, you know, supplies, grants or grants and scholarships and different funding. And just since we’ve initiated with robotics back in 2013, we have supported about $1.8 million throughout the state of Michigan. So I’m going to say that number again, because I was blown away by it $1.8 million, with these robotics programs. And, you know, when we interact with the students and their teams, you can tell it’s making a difference, not only in their life, that day, that year, but it’s putting them on a path that is just going to be fulfilling whether or not that’s in a STEM field or something else. They’re, they’re learning just invaluable skills. So it’s really thrilling.
William Krieger
Great, and money well spent it sounds like. I have to ask you, though, how did you get involved in this, it doesn’t sound like it’s just your job. Maybe I’m wrong. But it sounds like this is something you have a passion around.
Megan
It is. So Bill when I started at Consumers Energy, just six years ago, I was pulled in through one of our employee resources groups, the women’s engineering network, because I am an engineer by schooling and by most of my work career, but I was pulled in to help with an expo – just a fun way that we show off robotics and what Consumers Energy has available. And ever since I helped lead that one little event, I got sucked in. And I probably couldn’t ever leave. It’s just a joy to not only see what we do across the state, but then head to these competitions, like Kevin was sharing. He’s very correct that at the end of the two and a half minutes, you are on the edge of your seat. It’s like the final buzzer shot at a basketball game. And people are just cheering so loudly. So it’s thrilling. And I love my day job. But I really like robotics work.
William Krieger
Well, excellent. Thanks for sharing that. And Kevin, you don’t I don’t think I asked you this. What, what? What brought you into this?
Kevin
So when I was in high school, I strongly considered doing robotics. But I didn’t find out about it until my senior year of high school at that point I already had outside of school commitments that made it so it didn’t really fit my schedule. So then I went to college, graduated, was working here and I saw an email saying, Hey, we’re looking for people to help out with the robotics teams. And I was like, Oh, that might be cool. And then I saw another email saying, hey, no, seriously, we’re looking for people to help our robotics teams. And it’s like, okay, yeah, sure, I’ll give it a shot. Because I just graduated, well recently graduated a year before, I didn’t have a lot of money. And like, you know, it’d be cheap, fun to play with some robots and not have to pay for it myself. So I ended up helping the East Jackson FTC teams 86, 34 and 7668. And after I did the season with that the coach there was all like, we have FRC team. It’s the same thing but bigger. And I’m like, okay, yeah, that sounds like fun. And I’ve been doing it ever since.
William Krieger
I mean, who can refuse same thing, but how can you say no to that? And I want to point out something to the audience, too. Because many times I think engineering gets a bad rap, especially when we think about some of the stereotypical engineering thought processes that people have. And I gotta tell you sitting in a room with you, too, like, if people could see this, I know they’re hearing it. But if they could see this, they would, they would, it would change that stereotype. It really would. I mean, we’re all individuals. And it’s not ever fair to pay people with a broad brush. But walking into a meeting, thinking, I’m going to be talking with some engineers can be a little daunting, because I’m not an engineer. But guess what, engineers people are too, and show a lot of excitement, enthusiasm around this. So we are kind of coming up close to the end of the podcast. But I have two guests. I want to make sure that you get to say what you need to say here. So I’ll start out with you, Megan, what would you like our audience to take away from our discussion today?
Megan
Yeah, Bill, I’ll probably I’ll share just a couple of takeaways. So number one, if any of this sounds interesting, you know, local teams are always looking for volunteers. Consumers Energy loves to support our volunteers and their activities. And you’ll be surprised at how much fun you’ll have. I don’t think Kevin could even count how many hours he’s contributed towards this team because it’s just so rewarding. So seek out as a volunteer either through teams or even just joining me events, you know, we have a few events coming up at Consumers Energy. And please reach out if you have interest. But additionally, I’d really like to share that it is more than robots. You know, throughout the company, we have some astounding leadership that supports this program. And what they’ve realized, it’s building skills that allow these students to work in teams that will prepare them for their jobs, they will be some of the strongest candidates we’ll have down the road. And so I just encourage you to get involved, learn more, and be ready for those competitions. They are just a thrill.
William Krieger
Alright, so Megan, I heard you, you say it a couple of times, get involved volunteer, find a team? How can I do that? So if I don’t work for Consumers Energy, how am I going to find out about this?
Megan
Right? If you don’t work for Consumers Energy, there’s still a lot of ways to get involved with robotics in general. The first program is one that we see really holistically with your skills. And so if you go to firstinspires.com, that will showcase all of the opportunities, how to get involved with teams, where there’s events, and it’s international. So you don’t even have to live in Michigan. But we do have some of the best teams.
William Krieger
Great. Well, you know what we do have some international listeners, believe it or not, so that’s firstinspires.com. Okay, so that’s firstinspires.com. Check that out if you’re interested in getting involved in robotics. Thanks so much, Megan. Kevin, what would you like to leave our audience with today?
Kevin
Really, I would just echo Megan’s point, if you’re interested, or you’d like to get involved, look for a local event, or most of them stream on Twitch so you can just get a feel for it vicariously if that’s what you’re interested in. The big takeaway for me though, over the seven years I’ve done it really is I got involved because I thought it’d be fun to build robots. But actually, the reason I’ve stayed around is I like working with the kids. It’s really nice to well, it’s very fulfilling to see how they learn and grow over the years. To the point that I go to other events even and I’ll have kids from previous events come and say, Hey, you helped my team. Thank you so much. Glad you’re still here and doing this. I appreciate the help. And that’s, it’s nice to see i like it.
William Krieger
Well, good. And you know, I know we are closing the discussion here. But you bring up a question that I have and that is you talked about kind of watching the kids grow what’s the timeframe? From I’m starting to build this robot to I’m in this two-and-a-half-minute battle going on? Like, how long is that?
Kevin
Yeah, um, I know there’s an actual schedule, but I am not sure what it is offhand. But typically for the FTC season, we start in September, and it’s wrapping up in December. So roughly three to four months. And for FRC, it’s similar, we start in January, and worlds are in April.
William Krieger
Okay. So coming up this September this, you’ll be folks you’ll be hearing this podcast before it happens is in September. So please go out to firstinspires.com. If you are interested in getting involved in it, if you work here at Consumers Energy, I’ll put it out there. You can call Megan Hayward you can call Kevin Furlong and I’m sure they’ll be more than happy to direct you in the proper direction to get going on this. Also, I’m sure there’ll be some communications coming out on our internal website and all those places. So please be sure and look for that again. Thanks, Megan. And thanks, Kevin, for coming on today.
Megan
Thanks a lot, Bill.
Matt:
Thanks.
William Krieger
Thank you to the audience for listening in today. The Me You Us podcast is proudly sponsored by Consumers Energy leaving Michigan better than we found it. Remember, you can find the Me You Us podcast on all major podcasting platforms. So be sure to go out find us and subscribe. If you or someone you know is in crisis, please contact the Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. That’s 1-800-273-8255 If you are a veteran or know a Veteran who is in crisis, you can call 1-800-273-8255 and press one for the Veterans Crisis Line. And remember to tune in every Wednesday, as we talk about the things that impact your personal wellbeing.
