Hello, Whole Life Leaders

Our travel group landed back home at Dallas Love Field on Sunday afternoon, but I have not fully ‘landed’ from this trip yet. We were in Louisville for the 2017 VEX Robotics World Championship from Wednesday through Sunday. About 560 high school teams were competing in 6 divisions, plus 2 divisions of middle school teams and 2 divisions of university teams. There were close to a thousand teams total!

Teams came in from all over the world to compete. Dozens of countries were represented, including China, Russia, Great Britain, Canada, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia, Chile, Mexico, Colombia, Singapore, and Malaysia. The teams from Bahrain were an especially big hit, because they came to the event with the mindset of being ambassadors of connection and peace. They shared food and introduced people to their culture, including native dress and music.

The competition filled Thursday through Saturday. We spent the entirety of each day at the Kentucky Expo Center, going from match to match to see all three of my son’s high school’s teams compete in the qualifying rounds and then watch one of the teams compete in the elimination rounds. We had a short break each day to grab lunch from a concession stand or a food truck with little time to respond to email. By the time the event wrapped and we returned to the hotel and had dinner, I wound up with less than an hour for work in the evenings, relying on my phone as a hot spot with my computer. That was a blessing until I got back and things were piled up!

There were many remarkable aspects to this trip that I hope to remember for a long time. One of the most memorable will be the words the high school team from Bahrain put on a banner to hang at their booth:

“What we have learned from VEX — The world is such a small place for hatred to rule over humanity. Regardless of belief, color, religion, we can always teach our children to reject racism and prejudice but learn love and solidarity among individuals.”

When people talk about ways robots can make our lives better, I doubt any have predicted they would help teach this lesson.

As I walked the two enormous halls at the expo center and saw each booth, I was struck by the blending of races and cultures. The team comprised of mostly Sikhs was from California. There were Canadian teams of mostly Indian students. A team from Japan had a lot of westerners on it. Our school’s teams and other teams from our region in north Texas have students with a mixture of Arab, Indian, Chinese, southeast Asian, Latino, and European backgrounds. This was a vision of a hopeful future, where people share common interests and common goals and come together without being blocked by cultural differences.

In addition to this powerful expression of human connection, there were other lessons about people to be learned at the robotics competition.

What Robots Can Teach Us About Ourselves

For context, the robotics competition is designed as a challenge that functions as a game. Each team has designed and been improving its robot to compete in the game for months through local and regional competitions. The game this year is played on a field where robots move foam pieces over a low fence to the other side. There are two robotics team on each side of the field that work as an alliance. At the end of the match time, pieces are scored based on where they are on the field. Putting more of the pieces on your opponent’s side, especially in the higher score area, is the way to score more points and win the match.

The challenge for each team, then, was to design a robot that could move foam game pieces over the fence. Speed was important, but so was the ability to move multiple pieces. Robots that carried a larger load often went a little slower, because motors could be chosen for speed or strength. There were various designs for the contraption to move pieces, but most were some variation of a fork-like shovel or a claw.

The robots are controlled by an ‘autonomous’ computer program for the first fifteen seconds so the precision of the program is tested as the robot moves on its own to lift and move pieces over the fence. Then a driver with a remote control like a video game controller controllers the robot for the remainder of the two-minute round. This means teams have been improving their robots by interacting with them in competitions, by observing other robots, and by getting feedback from the driver.

Lesson 1: Resilience or Flexibility
In order to have a robot that can move quickly, one consideration is to keep it light weight. However, as it has to extend some part to move pieces over the fence, the robot becomes top-heavy and can tip. Many designs include some sort of anti-tip device to stabilize the robot, like small wheels extending upward at an angle that will brace the robot when it tips. Once a robot falls over, it is very hard for it to get back up. However, there were a few that were amazingly good at getting back up. The design included a way to move the lift device to push the robot upright.

One design decision was either to focus on preventing the tip or to focus on recovering from being tipped. Fortunately, people don’t have to choose. We can plan for flexibility so that we can “keep our feet” in all sorts of challenging circumstances. But we can also plan ways to recover and rebound after adversity trips us up.

Lesson 2: Manifesting a Vision

Robots are an expression of human imagination made real. This reminds us of one of the most unique abilities of the human species: to envision a different world and then shape and direct the environment to manifest that vision. Robots can be an amazing expression of the ability of people to design (envision) and create (work).

Robots cannot conceive of a vision and then decide how to make that vision real.They rely on human vision for direction and serve human purposes – at least for now!

Lesson 3: How We Think and Respond
The robots in the competition are controlled most of the time by the driver through a wireless video game style controller. This means that human responses are inherent in the design of the robotic device and the design of the computer programming that turns input through buttons and joysticks into movement by the robot. The programming is designed to make it easy for the driver to respond quickly, but also to give the driver enough options to make in-the-moment decisions.

As the design team improves the robotic device and the programming team improves the interactive input, they have to consider human thought processes and human responses. The robots can move forwards or backwards, turn left or right, and extend and elevate the lift contraption. Some fling things behind them and some extend like an accordion above the fence. All these movements have to be designed into the machine and into the programming of the controller so that human finger movements can make them happen quickly and efficiently. Everything we design to manipulate or interact with reveals a little bit of our nature, both how we make decisions and how we move.

Lesson 4: Non-linear Thinking and Chaos
Computers can play a mean game of chess because all the possible combinations of moves can be analyzed by a computer program with the probability of success for each move in each possible situation. There are a finite number of squares and game pieces. But computers cannot efficiently generate the strategy for a game where chaotic responses are possible. Driverless cars are moving in that direction, but they are created in the context of expecting other cars to follow certain rules most of the time.

On the robotics game field, your alliance partner may drive right into the space you want to occupy without realizing it’s a problem for you. There aren’t lanes and traffic lights. During the computer-controlled autonomous portion, if one robot gets in the way of another, they basically stop moving and don’t score any points. If that happens during the driver-controlled portion, the drivers can quickly work together to sort it out and move apart. Our brains are actually better at processing unexpected, chaotic events and choosing an effective path forward than a computer is — again, at least for now!

Lesson 5: Mental, Emotional, and Social Agility
To be an effective team that can design a highly responsive robot and regularly improve it requires a lot of human qualities. The collaborative design process requires approaching challenges from multiple perspectives and then choosing the best approach. Innovative thinking calls for multiple paths of processing information, such as spatial awareness, pattern recognition, and even intuition.

Team members have to navigate relationships with each other and within the overall team, learning and responding to the nuance’s of the team’s culture. The team has to come together and support one another at times, and then be able to allow conflict and dissent at times in order to produce new ideas for better results.

Each team member has to employ self-management around expectations and deadlines, anxiety and excitement about competitions, and frustration with disappointing results. The driver especially has to be able to self-manage stress and anxiety to stay focused. He or she also has to respond instantly to what is happening in the game, choosing from a variety of options in the moment based on an overall impression, not based on calculating all the likely outcomes. This is the kind of thinking people do very well that computers, so far, do not.

Lead it forward: Notice what you can learn about another person by observing how they approach challenges, come up with solutions, try them out, and adapt their approach based on what happens. Tune in and see how many complex things a person can do automatically. Observe people using tools, from simple to complex. Listen to the flow of a conversation in a group. Listen to music and singing, notice art work, and pay attention to narrative story telling. Think about what a computer program would have to include to be able to direct a robot to do any of these activities. Then share some of your discoveries with other people. Encourage them to look for the subtlety, complexity, variety, and swiftness of responses and appreciate what we human beings are capable of doing.

When we use our imagination to develop an inspiring vision, and then use our ability to create in order to make that vision a reality, we are at our best. When we come together with shared dreams and shared goals and create together, supporting one another and celebrating together, we elevate each other.

The team from Bahrain learned this through robotics, but they actually learned it from one another and the people they competed with.

May you be well, may you do well, and may you Thrive!

Take Care,

Stephen Coxsey, MA, LPC, PCC
Whole Life Leadership Coach

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About Steve Coxsey

Steve collaborates with people to design and implement a customized Whole Life Leadership plan that promotes success, fulfillment, and well-being for themselves and the people they lead. They thrive on a personally meaningful path and promote a culture of thriving wherever they are in charge, from families to professions, from small businesses to organizations.

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