 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Ah, welcome back to Think Tech. I'm Jay Fiedel. Here we are at the one o'clock block on a given Thursday talking about Hawaii, the state of energy, but it's much more than that. Energy happens to be the contact point, the beginning of all good things with Maria Tomei. Hi, Maria. Hi there. Nice to be here. And we have Thaka Kimura. He is the president of the Hawaii First Robotics. Welcome to the show. Thanks. Great to be here. We're giving away the topic. We're going to talk about First Robotics. We're going to talk about middle schoolers, middle schoolers, thinking and building tech in Hawaii. That's the name. So you get the think and the tech and the Hawaii. Think. There you go. You thought about that. Yeah. And then it's Hawaii First Robotics Lego League. Yeah. It's a sport. Okay. And we're going to tackle this probably in more than one show, but this is the beginning. This is a big explanation. So I guess the first thing is, what's a Lego? When I was a kid, a Lego was a little plastic box. It was actually wooden. It was a wooden block and it fit together with other blocks. That's as far as I got. Yeah. That was 1957. Firework plastic. Yeah. And it still is. You can still get the plastic blocks and they stack together and you build stuff and you figure out what you're going to build and you make it happen. And so I'm an engineer and Thaka's an engineer and a lot of the folks who first get into Legos have the appreciation of building, but it's much more. It's so much more. Well, what has it become? How has it flowered out? Give us the state of the art, if you will. Well, you can see them for real at the district tournaments or at the state championship, always having 10 district tournaments in November across the state. And the kids are taking not just the blocks, but actually a lot of the gears and the linkages and programming robots with motors, Legos got robots and motors now, to actually do missions on the field and to make the topic area come alive to them by doing these missions. They fix a broken pipe, they move things around, they have the rain water and the dirty water and they have to keep them separate and, you know, they're putting water where it belongs and keeping it away from where it doesn't. It's much more than Legos. Yeah. But it's not water, they're little translucent blue pieces that are constructed to look like water. Okay. Yeah. So that's basically what Lego has gotten into. You can build stuff, you can do stuff, you can program a robot to move things to actually imagine that you're fixing the problems that Hawaii faces or the world faces. So, Taka, how much of what Maria said you agree with? All of it. I do want to add. The right answer is 110 percent. One thing that I want to add, these Lego sets that we have, not only can they move but there are sensors on these things too. So you can sense how far away an object is or it can sense noise, it can sense direction, color, it can sense light. Wow. It's just a whole McGillar. Yeah. So that's how you do these autonomous robots because, I mean, the robot has to kind of know where it's going and then see what's going on and then be able to do their tasks with all those motors and attachments. Yeah. Just a footnote to that. You know, that's really the incredible thing. We're talking about autonomous here for fourth graders through eighth graders. Yeah. Autonomous. Could they spell that? Autonomous. And here they are competing with autonomous cars. Autonomous drones. Autonomous robots. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. It's amazing. Well, the real neat thing too is I have young kids. And nowadays, I mean, they're talking about programming in kindergarten. So if you see the programming language for these robots, it's not what you and I might think of as a programming language, like actually typing in words and things on a screen. There are these graphic blocks on the side. Drag and drop kind of things. And drag and drop. I mean, there's like a move block and you put that there and then say, OK, a weight block and then a sensor block. And you just kind of put these instructions in a row and then you tell the robot to run this program that you've made. To them, it's just like a set of... What fun. Yeah. I mean, I want to just punctuate this by asking whether I can do it. I mean, am I over the hill? I mean, it sounds like so much fun. I want to do it too. Eventually you could. My spare time. Yeah. You might have to be instructed about five minutes or so. It sounds like great fun for anybody. But especially for kids, it probably really... What does it do to them? It opens their minds. What kind of mental effect do you have when you expose a kid to robots? Well, actually, they build the robots themselves. So it's more what effect does that robot have on everything else? Yeah. The kids make great effect on their... Extending their own consciousness is what leverage. I know. It's the most incredible toy. It's exciting. It has an effect on other things. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I want to join the tournament. I may be a little old. I'm out of the eighth grade already, but... You'd have to come in as a volunteer. Okay. Yes. So what's it like? What do I see there if I go down there? What happens? Well, it depends where you're assigned. So let's say that you're a referee. Ooh, that's scary. Referee. You're good. We need... Anyway. There you are. So the folks who are watching the game... I'm putting out a total of that. We're talking about Legos, right? Yeah. First Robotics. Yes. The sport of the mind. Right. The sport of the mind. Yeah. Sorry. So each of these at the robot part, now there are different parts of the event, but the robot where the robot is on the playing field and moving things around, that's two and a half minutes. And so as a referee, you'd be there and make sure everything's in place. And the students, two out of the 10 team members will be up at the table with the robot that they have built and they have programmed. And the attachments that they can put on the robot and take off the robot. Then when it says go, this robot goes off and starts doing things. And you're watching to make sure that if they have to touch the lever in order to make that thing happen, it happens. And meeting the specifications. Right. Right. Yeah. Exactly. Or if they touch... Let's say the robot crashes into something and they have to go rescue it, they actually have a touch penalty. So you set aside one of the little pieces and set aside so you can keep track of how many penalties they might have incurred. And some of them do that as a strategy. So after two and a half minutes of intense concentration, lots of cheering. Sometimes growth. Everybody's watching. Sometimes catastrophe. Sometimes just so happy that something went perfectly. So fun. So fun. Yeah. At the end of that, okay, then you have your scoring sheet and you go and you check off, okay, you get this many points, you know, this is in that place and this is in that place. What do the winners get? They get it all up. Well... They get a trip to some far away place, like Washington, DC. Some of the teams are selected to advance to the state championship. And so those... And then we have awards in different categories. You know, you have a robot performance award. If your robot got more points than the other teams and they have three tries. They go up and they do this match three times each team. And so the highest score of all is the one that takes up the robot performance award. And then you've got core values award and then you also have an award for the project. And we didn't talk about the project yet. No, no, we're going to talk about the project. First I have the question. Right. This is lingering in my brain. You've got to sort of flush out the cash, you know. Sensors. Sensors. It reminds me of something that UH did in the harbor. In the harbor they made an autonomous robotic small catamaran thing. It was loaded with sensors and it went everywhere and did check the water, check the bottom, check the weather, I mean it checked everything and it reported back. And it was a robot, of course, and it was, in fact, well I guess you could control it about where it went. But it's a mission of sensing things that was pretty much automated. And it opened my mind just about three, four years ago. It opened my mind to the notion that with sensors, which are always getting better, right, always getting better, you can do anything. So my question to you, Takah, what's the most sophisticated sensor robotic you've seen in this competition? In this competition. Give us an example. There was one where the robot had to go and had to flip these plates around. Yeah. And depending on what color was facing, it would either have to look at it and sense like do I have to flip it around to the dark side or leave it like the way it is. And so you would have to program the robot to go look. If it had to be flipped over, you had to make a device that would actually flip this disk over, basically. And it would have to go to the next one, the next one, the next one. There were like four or five in a row. And I remember watching that thinking, the things that these kids are doing, I mean the kids don't know if it's going to be the color side or the black side facing them. So the robot has to know that. All on its own. And it did it. And then to figure out how to flip this thing over, it was pretty amazing. And these are like fourth to eighth graders. Well, that's the strength, isn't it? They can think out of the box. Yeah, the opportunity. Yeah, yeah. They're just amazing. But it also excites their ability to think. And we talk about robots doing autonomous things and sensors and all that. This is what we need now. This is going to be, I mean, it already is a world of robots. So it's totally relevant that these kids learn about robotics. Because if they give it five or 10 years, we're going to have robots doing everything. And they're right. They'll be marketable. When they hit the 12th grade, big bucks. I can't imagine how smart the engineers coming out of school are going to be when these kids go through engineering school and they hit the workforce. I mean, they've been doing this since they've been in kindergarten. So they're just going to be leaps and bounds over anything that we can do. This has changed their lives. I mean, if we had one right here right now, and we said to them, are you going to go into robotics and engineering and buildings, things like this, what would you say? Well, they're probably thinking about it. And at that age, they know that they can go into almost anything. So if they're enjoying the creative part and the engineering part, they might very well. But the other part is it's not just for the kids who want to be engineers or think they want to be engineers. Because you've got the project side and you've got this whole teamwork side. And if you have a smart person who can put stuff together and make the device do what he wants, is that enough? Or does he have to communicate? Does he have to get a team to get it? Do they have to coordinate? That's one of the things is you've got 10 kids on a team and one robot and a bunch of different missions. Sometimes, what, 15 missions or something? You've got to negotiate and you strategize. Which missions do we do first? Which one? How long do they take? How can we put them in order? And sometimes the kids have to reprogram the thing they worked so hard on. They may need to rebuild that attachment that they've fallen in love with because it's such a perfect design. But it has to work with the real world. It has to work with the other parts of the system. And so the earlier they can learn that, I think, the more flexible they become when they need to get into a real team where you have all these challenges and you have to tweak your design, you have to change your design, you have to change the whole strategy sometimes because it's just not working there. But then in the process, you're building confidence. It's all about confidence. So you know that you can try again. Failure, is it a bad thing or is it a step to learning? If you can learn from something that didn't work, you can eliminate that and come up with something better. But you might go back to that later to answer another challenge. So I think that whole mindset, the growth mindset, the integrating, the learning, and working with others and appreciating what others can bring to the project. And so the project. Okay, before we talk about the project, I want to see the graphics. First of all, the organizational graphic you have to describe to us. And then I want to see the kids with all that vitality and confidence that you're talking about. I want to feel there. So that graphic, I think the Hawaii First Robotics is an international program. I want to talk a little bit about it. So first isn't, I mean it's first and number one. What is first stands for? First stands for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. It was founded by Dean Kamen who... Oh, I remember him with the... Segway. The Segway guy. He came out here, he was here. Oh yeah? Yeah, I met him. Oh great. Yeah, so it was all started by him back in 1989. And so under first there are a variety of competitions or programs, I guess. There's the graphic that just came up. The lowest level would be Junior. First Lego League Junior, that's for kindergarten. Okay, so was that it? Okay, the green one. So kindergarten to fourth grade. And that's where Maria kind of alluded to, but every year there's like a challenge theme. This year it's hydrodynamic, so it's like water resources. So the Junior kids, the FLL Junior kids will make a model in the theme of that year. You know, it'll do something related to water resources. They get certain kinds of challenges in the other groups, the red and the brown there. They get other kinds of challenges. Right, so first Lego League, which is that middle one for grades fourth to eight, they'll have to do a project in the theme of that year. So this year's teams will think about ways to maybe purify water better or to store water more efficiently. Waste water. So yeah, so there'll be that. There'll be a project that they have to think about and present to judges. And then they'll also have to make an autonomous robot to do missions on a mission board in that theme. Everybody on the team have to present, because sometimes they're shy, you know. The whole team has to. The whole team has to get out there. The whole team goes together and makes a presentation to the judges. At the end of the day, nobody is shy. They might be shy, but they get over, they learn to get over that. It's part of the sport, yeah. And I gotta say, I mean, this is one of the things that really sets, to me, sets the first program apart from other robotics programs, because a lot of times the other robotics programs concentrate on robotics, but then what first does is it promotes, they have, I think called gracious professionalism, and I'll read this off, because I know I wouldn't do it justice unless I read it, but gracious professionalism is a part of the ethos of first. It is a way of doing things that encourages high quality work, emphasizes value of others, and respects individuals and their community. So in the long run, gracious professionalism is part of pursuing a meaningful life, when they can add to society and enjoy the satisfaction of knowing one's act with integrity and sensitivity. So that on graphic number three shows the three parts. You see that again, graphic number three? Yeah. Well, that's two. That's two, okay. The graphic number three is a triangle, and it shows robotics. Triangle, if we can find it. Nope. Nope, that's okay. That's okay. We'll describe it verbally. We need to be flexible. Yes, we do. Yeah. Yeah. Resilient. This is what Dr. was talking about. Yeah, so there's a series of core values that First has. So the first one is we are a team. We do work to find solutions with guidance from our coaches and mentors. We know our coaches and mentors do not have all the answers, and we learn together. We honor the spirit of friendly competition. Good sportsmanship, basically. What we discover is more important than what we win, which is a really important point for First. We share our experiences with others, and we display gracious professionalism and co-operatician in everything that we do, and we have fun. Wow. And I'll tell you one other you didn't mention. About halfway through the show, we take a break. We can do that now. All right. This is Stink Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Son, all the better to see you with my dear. That's so cool. What are you doing? Okay, cool. Research says reading from birth accelerates the baby's brain development. And you're doing that now? Oh, yeah, yeah. This is the starting line. Posh. Oh, dad. Read aloud 15 minutes. Every child, every parent, every day. Aloha. My name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea. Law Across the Sea comes on every other Monday at 11 a.m. Please join us. I like to bring in guests that talk about all types of things that come across the sea to Hawaii, not just law, love, people, ideas, history. Please join us for Law Across the Sea. Aloha. Bingo, we're back. Yeah. And we're gonna bring some kids down. All right. That'd be great. We're gonna show them around. We're gonna show them all our technology. We're gonna show them all the electronics we can in the thought that they might be able to use that when they set up these robotics. Yeah. Okay, wanna go back to the point about the concept, the problem, the solution. This is really important. How do you set that up, Maria? Well, I think he was talking about what he loves about the program. The project piece of it is an opportunity to show the kids, hey, this is what's happening in the real world. Your community in this topic, this year it's water. Water, right. It was energy in 2007, which is when I got involved originally. So they have all these, every year is a different topic. So this year they're looking at how does Hawaii find and transport and treat and dispose of and use water and how can we do it better? So they have to imagine themselves inventing not just a technology, but sometimes it's a law. Sometimes it's a public information campaign. It's some way to deal with whatever problem they have identified and they care about. And not only are they imagining themselves doing this, they actually sometimes are pursuing that and they're getting involved in the real issues in society that at this grade four through eighth, do we usually expect the kids to get knowledgeable about a topic, do research on how it could be better and propose a solution that's very empowering to them, very exciting to them and their teachers and their mentors. It should be. It's a big, big, big issue and lots of things are happening. And I wonder, I mean, for example, this is really important, yeah. For example, there's a guy named Don Thomas in Southwestern University, you must know him, right? He'll work in a geothermal, but he's also incidentally been working with water and he made this fabulous discovery, okay, in the saddle between Manakea and Manila. He found out the water table was much higher and there was lots more fresh water there because of the topography. This was not discovered when they did the last topographical survey in 1940 or so. He discovered it within the last year or two, okay? And we actually have much more fresh water, not only on the big island in the saddle, but on all the islands because of discoveries he has made regarding the strata of the topography, okay? So if you're talking with kids about a project involving water, they should know about this, right? They should sort of build this in. Will they know, will they care about what Don Thomas is doing? Wow, well, you know there are a bunch of teams on the big, is he on the big island or a wahu? Both. Okay, ooh. Yeah, because the teams are looking for mentors in the community that they can go talk to, check their ideas, get ideas from them. What are the issues? What are the problems? What are some solutions? And then when they come up with a solution to actually go take it to the experts and say, hey, what do you think? Yeah, that's excellent. Why would he love to talk to them? Would they love to talk to him? They would, yeah. So we can send his contact info to the coaches and say, hey guys. So this could happen. They could actually connect with cutting-edge stuff right now. It can be Skype, it can be in-person, you know, if he's interested in maybe serving as a judge for... He might be, a scientist. Yeah, we've got a tournament on the big island. We've got a bunch of tournaments on a wahu. I don't know if he won. It will be great if it's gonna... Yeah, anyway. You know, San Diego just got finished spending $10 billion on desalination. Yeah. And the jury's out as to whether we need that here, but assuming we wreck our water supply and the lens, you know, the lens you guys are engineers and the lens, right? Yeah, yeah. You know, because of environmental violations of one kind or another. Then maybe those kids should learn about desalination too, about the process. Sure. The cost, the entrepreneurial aspects of the economics of it, right? So you could also factor that into the solution, the problem and the solution for them. So that's really cutting-edge current stuff. It is. Yeah. It is. Boy, fabulous. I knew he'd like this. I do. So tell us about some of the other topics that have been chosen and tell us who between the two of you, Maria and Taka, has been choosing these topics. Oh, we don't. This is an international program. Oh, some guy in Norway? No, no. No, probably in New Hampshire, I think, is where they're based. Oh, where Dean Kamen lives. He lives there, you know. That's probably why it's based there. So yeah, every year, there's a big reveal in September. And that's when they announce what the challenge of that year is gonna be. So we don't know. We don't know what it's gonna be until they announce it. Well, so it's the same everywhere. Yeah. But it's not the same for all the three groups that we saw on the chart. It'll be different for those three groups. It'll be related. Like, the junior folks will do something water-related this year as well. But not necessarily exactly the same. Well, the general topic is that but the solutions they're seeking to be different and the solutions they find, certainly will be different. So you asked what the topics have been. So I got involved in 2007, which is about halfway there. It started in 1999, but in 2007 was Power Puzzle, which is all about energy. So that's when I got started in it. I don't know what year you first. Smart moves. Oh, 2009, transportation, yep. So between 2007 and 2009 was 2008, Climate Connections, Global Climate Change. In 2010, it was about biomedical engineering, body forward. 2011 was Food Factor, Preventing Food Worn Illness. Yeah, and 2012, Senior Solutions, Assisting the Elderly. You know, what are their challenges? Oh, sure. What can we do? Yeah, that was very interesting. You're all great topics. 2013, Nature's Sherry, Natural Disasters. How do you make your cities more resilient? How do you recover from natural disasters? Talk about a topical thing now. So the kids who went through that are probably even more understanding of what some folks are facing these days. 2014, World Class, Improving the Teaching Process. Now that was very close to home for everybody involved. Hey, how can we... You all had opinions about that, yeah. Yeah, how do people learn? How do you communicate that, you know, and how do you improve that? Using technology, using different understanding of the brain, understanding of development. It was great. 2015, Trash Trek, Management of Solid Waste. You know, in that one, I remember some team actually talking about implementing solutions. They did a whole recycling thing with the plastic forks at their school, you know, or, you know, bring your own utensils. You know, it actually kind of, the whole school stopped using as much plastic through the effort of this team of 10 kids. Yeah. Animal Allies was 2016, Animal People Interactions and 2017, Hydrodynamics, Water. So, the Lego part is only one possible solution to the problem you are assigning them, am I right? Well, it's a different part. You don't necessarily have to have... Oh. Or do you? Lego and... The team has to do all three parts of it. Three parts are? Well, the robotics piece, which is the Legos. The Lego Mindstorms robot and the... You build the pieces out of Legos. Right. On this four-foot by eight-foot playing field. Okay. That's a required part. That's a required part. You really gotta be efficient. And project is one part of it. And then the core values. They actually have a teamwork exercise and whatnot. And then there's an extra bit focusing on the design of their robots and attachments and stuff. So, on the competition day, what people can see is the robots on the four-foot by eight-foot field trying the different missions and getting points. The other stuff is in small groups with professionals and other community members as the judges on the teamwork, robot design, and project. So, every team has to do all of those parts. And those are interviews. Those three parts. So, the team will go in without their coaches. Adults aren't allowed in there, except for the judges. So, just a team and like three judges and they'll have to do a presentation on either core values, how they work together as a team. Their project, like what their innovative solution is and why it should be implemented or how they designed and executed their robot. They do it all on their own. Yeah. So, what are the parameters for winning? I mean, what do you have to do to win? You have to, well, each one has a score. And so, we'll put that in a spreadsheet and you calculate the score. And the judges score it numerically. Right. They'll do it by rankings. And then certain, you know, you'll get more points for being higher up obviously. And so, they'll average the three together and the team with the best average score will win. You know, I love the notion that these are the areas of inquiry you read out. Those problems, those projects are really totally current. We could use solutions. But even if these kids don't come up with solutions right now today in November, they're oriented toward finding solutions and these problems are not gonna be resolved overnight. So, they'll be building, what do you call it, scientific citizens, engineering citizens, remember? Who will solve the problems of the future? We need them bad. Oh, yeah. So, my question is why, you named about 1,000 kids are involved. In Hawaii. In Hawaii statewide. Why isn't every single kid in every single school starting fourth grade involved in this program? A lot of it is coaching and just, it takes a lot of work. On the part of the coaches. Right, and so that's a difficulty because I know a lot of schools would love to have more kids involved but then they might have only a couple of teachers who are willing to do that. It's a lot of time for the parents too. I mean, there's a lot of practice time. How can I get to be a coach? You wanna be one? You can make your coach right now. Write my name down. Yeah, we'll do, we'll do. We're always looking for coaches. Or mentors. Now in March, you know, the Hawaii Academy of Science conducts its, what do you call it, science fair. It's a convention center and they got 700 applicants usually from the statewide to come and present their poster boards in their projects and listen and defend their projects, which is an important part of it. What's the comparison? Can I be in both? Should I be in both? A lot of kids are. I mean, a lot of those kids who do Lego League because the Lego League, the state tournament is in December. So usually you can just do that whole thing and it's done in December and then after that you can do your thing. One in the fall, one in the spring. Yep. Had my whole year occupied by science. Yeah, yeah. Okay, we're about out of time. So I'd like to ask you guys to do two separate things, okay? First, you Maria, I'd like you to address the parents of these kids and tell them what they should know and think about what they should ideate about in terms of dealing with and being involved, having the kids involved in this program. Thank you for supporting, because the parents are supporting just as much as, you know, all of those of us who are setting things up because the parents do volunteering, you know, they bring the kids and they support the coaches and they bring the snacks and everything else. And they really do contribute a lot and then we ask them to serve as volunteers. So very often you've got the judges and the referees and the folks at the events, you know, it takes like 50 people to just show up on that day to be directing the traffic and registering people and, you know, delivering things where they need to be delivered and keeping score. So they really put in a lot of time too. So thank you for supporting the programs and supporting the teachers and the coaches and your kids and contributing whatever needs to be contributed to this program. You are so enthusiastic. How do you really feel? Oh, sorry. It's terrible. Too much work. Taka. Yes. Could you address some remarks to the kids? The kids in the program and the kids who could come into the program, why is it in their interest to do so? Well, first of all, it's fun. I mean, you know, that last core value, we have fun and it is, you know, my daughters have done it and they love doing it. They make really good friends through the process. And then before they know it, they've learned something. But, you know, it's, you know, what's there not to know about playing with Legos and doing these things on the game board? I mean, it's a great experience. You get to meet all sorts of people, even from other schools. If you win, you might get to go to worlds and compete against people from all over the world and meet all sorts of different people. So it's just a great program and I can't say nothing about it. Our kids are our most important asset. We've got to build them to do this. Yep, they got to take care of us. Yeah. Thank you, Taka. Thank you, Maria. Thank you. All the way.