The Kentucky chapter of FIRST Robotics gives students the opportunity to build, operate, and compete with their own creations.

Competitions are held on the state, national, and international levels.

And during what's considered the off-season for the team at Louisville's Central High School, groups from across Kentucky, Indiana, and other states assemble their machines to face off in the RiverBOaT Rumble.

Drivers behind the line.

Three, two, one... FIRST Robotics events are like a sportings event, science fair, and concert, all in one.

I just love the experience.

It's just a great way to use my passion for engineering and, like, an actual sport.

It's a way to show off the work that we're so proud of.

You know, it's not really about the competition.

We call it the hardest fun you'll ever have.

You know, you finish this robot that, even if it didn't do well, you know, it runs, and it does certain things that you didn't think it could ever do.

I think hockey is a really apt comparison in which the, it's a fast pace, it's moving quick.

Sometimes there's some hits along the way.

Today, we've got the RiverBOaT Rumble going on.

Teams from Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Alabama, Ohio, all here to compete with their robots that they've built from January to now.

Each alliance, you have three teams, and it is usually red alliance and blue alliance.

The three teams are trying to work together to score as most points as possible compared to the other three teams.

While the teams are competing against each other, they also work together throughout, and that's embedded in how the competition works.

We have a word that we use at FIRST called coopertition, because your opponent in one match may be your alliance partner in the next match.

So, it's embedded in that way, but it's also just the culture of FIRST to support the competition and to help everybody.

Every year, there's a different game.

This year, you have to pick up these rings and put them in either high goals or low goals.

And there's a lot of defenses involved.

You can block some other goals.

At the end, if you can climb up a chain, then you get extra points, for instance.

So, you got to build a robot to do multiple things.

This is the first time we've held one of these things in Louisville, and I've done robotic competitions here in this building before, but not one like this.

This is the big one.

There is not a FIRST Robotics Competition qualifying event here in the state of Kentucky.

We only have 19.

Our teams were very young.

Indiana has 65 teams.

So, what we're hoping to accomplish here with this off-season event and with this partnership is just growth across both states.

This is a way in which we can have an event here in the state.

Central High School just made sense as a location because Louisville is central.

We have three teams around here, and this is the only team affiliated with the high school.

It's our host team, Louisville Centrons.

Well, we started off with one little robot in 2015.

We have developed, we've gotten other robots, and other facilities.

We have this maker space that we build.

This is a really good opportunity for Central High School to showcase its robotics program.

To put it on at the public school level is very hard.

It takes a lot of good funding.

We have a lot of great people behind us, but it also takes kids that are willing to not have a success right away, that they've gotta go through the process of learning and experimenting, and there's some failure, and then you gotta pick up from that and handle the adversity.

It takes a village to build a robot.

You need everybody to be involved.

You got some people building the robot, some people programming it, and some people just watching videos and learning how to drive.

It's a lot of teamwork and team efforts.

But it's really just making sure everyone can rely on each other so we don't end up running into problems where one person is only doing this, doesn't get help, and the mechanism ends up failing.

So, I've been in it since fourth grade, and when I got to high school, it was like, "I really wanna do this again," and then they had the FRC, which was completely different from what I've ever done.

It was a lot more creative thinking, less boundaries on what you can and couldn't do.

I really wanted to be involved more in the robotics team than just sitting on the sidelines and helping out where I can.

I actually wanna be there.

The best thing about FIRST is the challenge.

A lot of our kids, there's not a playbook to how they have to live their lives or what they should do, and they have to figure it out, and they have to figure out the right way.

And we do that in the robotics as well.

7516 has planned a little bit of defense in the Red Alliance zone.

A lot of our alumni go to the Speed School of Engineering at Louisville.

We started with a trickle about sending more students to engineering school, but then, I mean, like last year, we sent 15 kids off to engineering school, and we got a big group going this year also.

They've gone on to work in robotics firms, electrical companies, and programming.

That's really what teaching's all about.

You know, I want the best for them, and so I hope to lay that foundation here for them.

During a competition day, I usually either do pit crew or I'm going up two matches to assist the driver with the laptop and the controller, making sure the robot is all ready to go once we turn it on.

So, we're in the pits right now.

This is where all of the teams get ready for their matches, fix anything that breaks down on the field, and do any maintenance, that sort of stuff.

If you've ever watched a NASCAR race, that's what I describe the pit area to be, where a NASCAR pit area is you have tools, you have people, you know, if there's a problem, you fix it, you test a little bit, and all your supplies are there.

With the robot Tiny Tim, it's the Robo Racers.

Our robot is a pickup from the ground robot, and so it has an intake that flips over and then intakes the note and then flips back and shoots it.

It's pretty unique to have a shooter and an intake as the same thing.

So, our robot this year, we have some unique climbing aspects here.

Basically, our shooter system, we're really happy with.

We made a lot of fail-safes in the design, so our hard stops, where we physically cannot go anymore, also happen to be like the set positions for many of our movements, so we're really happy about that.

I think we're a really good speaker score.

The speaker is the higher goal.

We're very, very fast with our cycle time from the source to the speaker, and I think we're just one of the fastest ones out there.

The biggest thing I hope for with our students is that they understand that learning and being competitive can go hand-in-hand, and there's always lessons to learn from successes and failures.

Just seeing how well the students find a space where they can really own it and flourish, but it's more than robots, and we're using robots to build students, not students to build robots.

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