Utah Kids Using Robots to Build a Future

SANDY, Utah — The plastic robots cluttering a table in a living room aren’t getting any help.

“There’s no remote controls involved in this,” said Katie Drennan, a high school junior.  “It’s completely autonomous.”

And so it goes with humans.  We’re given a little programming, but the actual work itself is up to us.

“This is a really big amount of fun for us,” said Eric Snaufer.

Finding fun in something that may seem like a chore is what brings together kids like them on a summer afternoon.

“It’s actually one of my favorite extracurricular things that I’ve ever done,” Drennan said.

It’s called First Lego League: a worldwide competition to build robots using kits made by Lego, to complete specific tasks.

“A lot of people are like ‘Wow, you’re really young for robotics,'” said Drennan.

Their team, called the Bionic Porcupines, has done rather well for themselves.  They came in first in the state competition, which launched them even higher.

“We got to go on to the world competition in Texas,” Drennan said.  “There’s people from Brazil, all sorts of Spanish-speaking countries.

There’s Australia, Israel, pretty much most countries in the world compete.”

They faced off against well over a 100 different teams, and came in right near the top.

“We are the first team in Utah to bring home a judged award from worlds,” said Drennan.

They’re taking what they’ve learned and are using it far beyond motors and plastic blocks.

“We were already thinking of doing an app, because that’s kind of the new thing,” said Allison Drennan, holding up her smartphone.

The team built an app for Sandy residents to track their water usage.

“We as a team wrote over 50,000 lines of code for the app,” said Timothy Holt, another member of the team.

They all believe these are important skills, which might just pay off in the future — or might pay off right now.

“I’ve actually agreed to take one on,” Holt said.  “I work for a couple weeks or so, and then I get paid for making their apps for them.”

Hired to build an app for a company at 13 — all before he’s even old enough to drive.

They aren’t all planning on pursuing robotics as a career, but they do see it as a path to their future.

“I’m definitely going to use it to help me to get into somewhere good so that I can follow my dreams,” said Snaufer.

They’re taking their programming and their hard work, and achieving far more than a mere robot ever could.

“Pretty much everything that has ever come of robotics for me has been a good thing,” Drennan said.