Titanium Titans: Building skills while building robotics
You might remember playing with an erector set or Legos when you were growing up. Times have changed, and robotics have come a long way over the years. Now, one local nonprofit group is helping kids learn to design and build robotics that compete on a world stage.
Titanium Titans Robotics’ purpose is to inspire the people of this world to become the innovators, leaders, visionaries, and problem-solvers of tomorrow, and to enrich the lives of community members through FIRST (For Inspiration & Recognition of Science & Technology) robotics, beginning with the youth of Washington County. For their efforts, the Titans are this month’s recipient of the Driven By Hope Award, sponsored by Washington Auto Mall.
The primary goal of the Titans is to develop STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) skills, teaching problem solving, decision making, teamwork, professionalism and communication.
The Titanium Titans are high school students from a variety of schools throughout Washington County and the surrounding area. The team was created through a partnership between the Western Area Career & Technology Center (WACTC) FIRST Robotics Team and the Peters Township Public Library Robotics Team in 2013. They combined the following year to create the Titans. In 2017, the group moved to The Armory Youth Center in downtown Canonsburg and continues using that location as a build space. The Titans also opened a community outreach space in Donaldson’s Crossroads.
Titanium Titans board President Dan Chismar became involved four years ago after his daughter attended one of the group’s outreach sessions and joined the Lego League, where kids build robots out of Lego bricks and program them to accomplish tasks. She eventually moved up to the Titans, composed of students in eighth through 12th grade.
“Every year they announce a new competition, and you’re to build a robot from scratch to accomplish as many of these goals and score as many points as you can as part of this competition,” said Chismar.
Each competition is announced in January, giving teams about six to eight weeks to design, build and program their robot to compete.
“It’s intense,” Chismar said. “I’m one of the technical mentors on the team. Our organization is all nonprofit, 100% volunteers. We have no paid employees, and the active mentors donate 500 to 600 hours a year. It’s an incredible time commitment, but when you see the kids learning and developing in things that the schools struggle with, those skills are so valuable in life.”
Not only does the competition teach the main STEM skills, but it also teaches members how to work as a group, be a good team member, how to solve problems and make good decisions, and how to overcome failure.
The Titans is one of 3,800 teams around the world, and the cost of keeping them going is not low. Creating these sophisticated robots can cost tens of thousands of dollars, and Chismar said the No. 1 struggle is funding.
“We try to keep the costs for the children low,” he said. “We do fundraising, we look for sponsors and sponsorships and grants for equipment.” Dues for members run $250 for one year, and the kids commit to selling raffle tickets to offset that cost.
The Titans will enter three competitions this year in Pittsburgh, New York and Tennessee, and the team is already hard at work designing its robot. They often get help from former members who have become mentors.
“We’ve had several students that have been through the program that come back and mentor because they said this has meant more to their life than their entire college program,” Chismar said. “They realize how important it is and now they want to give back to the teams. It builds skill sets that the schools don’t build.”
For more information on the Titanium Titans and to find out how to support them by donating or volunteering, visit https://titaniumtitans.org/.