UMaine to Host Robotics Competition for Middle, High School Students

Contact: Ryan Foley, ryan.t.foley@umit.maine.edu; Aimee Dolloff, (207) 581-3777

ORONO, Maine – The University of Maine Robotics Club will host VEX, a robotics competition for middle and high school students, from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Saturday, April 11.

Opening ceremonies will begin at 9:15 a.m. at UMaine’s Donald P. Corbett Building in room 100 with students from around the state and New Hampshire getting a chance to experience real world engineering while applying the math and science skills they learn in school.

The VEX league was piloted last year, when only one official event was held.  This year the program has grown exponentially with more than 1,500 teams worldwide, and at least one VEX event being held in every state in the United States.

The UMaine event is being hosted by the robotics club and its founder, mechanical engineering student Ryan Foley. Foley started the university’s robotics club in 2006 in hopes of getting a FIRST Robotics team running at one of the local high schools.

The FIRST Robotics Competition challenges teams of young people and their mentors to solve a common problem in a six-week timeframe using a standard “kit of parts” and a common set of rules.

Foley found the program both fun and rewarding when he was in high school and wanted to share the experience with others.

“In high school, I restarted my school’s FIRST robotics team and served as a captain for three years, then a mentor for one year,” says Foley.

Once he formed the robotics team at UMaine, students became interested in doing more than just the FIRST project.

“The club picked up other projects, including a T-shirt launching robot, a maze solving robot for the micromouse contest, and currently the club is working on a series of smaller robots built out of scrap parts from printers, remote control cars, and similar things,” Foley says. “My main project with the club though is the FIRST Robotics Team from United Technologies Center in Bangor. A small group of us mentor them, and I have been the team manager since it’s creation back in 2007. The Vex robotics program is my other main focus.”

After a couple of seasons with the FIRST team, Foley realized that many Maine high schools don’t have the resources needed for such a team. 

“When VEX came out, it was designed to provide the same kind of experience at a much more affordable cost and size,” Foley says. “I started to put things in motion for it last May, talking to VEX about hosting an event.”

After holding a video conference with the interested teams, they decided to participate in a VEX event because there were fewer regulations, and only 12 teams are required to host an official event.

About six or seven schools were involved in the October video conference, and Foley says most of them have put together VEX teams for the upcoming event, although local budget restrictions resulted in a few schools being unable to participate.

“The goal of the event follows the VEX mission of giving students a way to apply their math and science skills, while learning about engineering at the same time,” says Foley.

Those participating in Saturday’s event, some with multiple teams, will include: Portland Arts & Technology High School, Greely High School, Falmouth High School, Jay High School, Cape Elizabeth, Sanford High School, United Technologies Center Region 4 of Bangor, and New Hampshire’s Candia High School and  Timberlane Regional High School, where Foley graduated in 2004.

In addition to his engineering studies, Foley is a member of UMaine’s pep band and is a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

“A lot of my free time goes towards coordinating and planning for FIRST and VEX, but I still manage to squeeze time out of my week to relax and hang out with friends from time to time,” says Foley. “I put a lot of time into FIRST and VEX because FIRST is why I’m studying engineering now, and it’s made me who I am and opened up a world of opportunities for me. I dedicate a lot of my time to these programs because I feel that its only fair of me to do what I can to make sure other students have the same chance I did back in high school.”