May 2024 Volume 6

FOUNDATION NEWS

FIA Supports the 2024 National Robotics Challenge By Niamh Field

How Can Those Skills Serve the Students if They Were to Have a Career in The Forging Industry? Since The National Robotics Challenge is open platform, students can build their robots however they would like. By participating in this competition, students get the opportu nity to explore various ways to manufacture parts- one of them being forging! This means that some students may choose to forge parts for their robots. One competition within the National Robotics Challenge is the “Combats Robot” competition. Tad Douce mentioned that forged parts can be “ideal” for these robots such as a battle shield or a combat weapon.

The National Robotics Challenge originally began in 1986 as the “Society of Manufac turing Engineers Robotic Technology and Engineering Challenge”. In 2003, it was thought that this event would end due to the Society of Manufacturing Engineers being unable to continue sponsorship of the event. The event was revived in 2004 under the new name of “The National Robotics Challenge” by Ed Goodwin, Ritch Ramey, and Tad Douce1. Now, the competition offers twelve robotics contests. The National Robotics Challenge is the longest running robotics competition. FIA supported the 2024 event by sponsoring the “Pick and Place” competition. In addi

tion, FIA employees Niamh Field and Abiyah Yisrael attended the National Robotics Challenge in Marion, Ohio. The competition strives to provide educational robotics challenges for students to develop their creativity, engineering, problem solving, and leadership skills2. During this year’s event, FIA had the opportunity to inter view Tad Douce, founding director. Tad provided some insight into how this competition benefits its participants and how it could serve a student’s future with a career in the forging industry. What Do Students Gain From Participating in This Competition?

According to Tad, the student partici pants of the National Robotics Chal lenge gain a lot of various knowledge and skills from competing. The competition is open platform, meaning that the participants can get creative and use any kit or scratch build for their robots. This allows students to learn industry ready skills including problem solving, soldering, coding, and motor control. Tad believes that the biggest skills that participants learn is persistence and “troubleshooting on the fly”.

Niamh Field (left) & Abiyah Yisrael (right)

For more information about the National Robotics Challenge, visit www.thenrc.org. References: 1. About Us. The National Robotics Challenge. https://www.thenrc. org/who-we-are#OurMissionandValues 2. NRC Contest Rules. The National Robotics Challenge. https://irp. cdn-website.com/9297868f/files/uploaded/NRCContestRules2024. pdf

FIA MAGAZINE | MAY 2024 88