IOWA CITY

For six hours a week, often more, you’ll find 15 high school students working nights and weekends in the basement of a building at the Johnson County Fairgrounds.

They aren’t your typical students – most of them are homeschooled or attend a virtual academy. They don’t have typical skills – they are designers, builders, and programmers. And they aren’t focused on typical tasks – their minds are consumed with the simplicity, functionality, and feasibility of robotic systems.

On the surface, these kids are building robots for competition.

Look deeper, however, and you’ll find they are internally building frameworks for successful problem solving, profitable teamwork, and a life-long love of math and science.

“Ever since I was little, I’ve always kind of been mechanically inclined,” Elijah tells me as we stand around outside, waiting for a mistakenly locked door to be unbolted. “I was always doing little kits and stuff like that. And then Ben was like – we met at the homeschool building – ‘You should come down to FTC, I bet you’ll really like it.’”

“I love it,” he admits.

FTC stands for FIRST Tech Challenge, a robotics competition for students grades 7-12 to design, build, and program robots to compete against other teams. It’s one of six major robotics programs organized by FIRST, a global nonprofit that aims to prepare youth for the future; others are FIRST Lego League, FIRST Robotics Competition, and FIRST Global Challenge.

Here at the Johnson County Fairgrounds, where twilight falls this Tuesday, Oct. 29, the EagleBots, a Johnson County 4-H club, are about to get to work. The club is unique in that it is one of few not school-affiliated, which allows homeschooled and virtual academy students to join when otherwise they would not have that opportunity.

“We used to meet in Washington,” in an old corn-sorting building, Ben says, and the club was affiliated with Washington County 4-H, but that “made it hard for a lot of people from Iowa City to come and join, which is where a large majority of homeschoolers live, which is kind of the target demographic, especially for our club.”

So the robotics club switched 4-H affiliations and found a space to work in Iowa City. The club is now home to both nontraditional students and those who attend Iowa City schools.

“FTC is completely club run,” Ben explains. That means that the students, guided by adult mentors, are expected to create a team identity, raise funds to meet their goals, and advance STEM appreciation in their communities as part of the robotics competition experience. Arranging workspace is their responsibility, and they were happy to procure the basement of a Fairgrounds building for that purpose.

Once we get inside the building, students and mentors filter in and get to work.

On September 7, this season’s competition was revealed to all FTC teams around the world simultaneously, about 7,900 of them: “Into the Deep” challenges teams to “dive their robots into the depths of the ocean to explore the unknown and reveal its wonders.”

For the six weeks before I met them, the EagleBots have been at work designing, building, and programming two robots for competition: Dory (the blue one) and Bruce (the white one), their names inspired by the film “Finding Nemo,” as “every season has a theme, [and] this season is ocean-themed,” Ben explains.

Teams are given a 60-plus page document that outlines the official rules they must follow – something the students must stay attentive to lest they design an illegal mechanism (which they initially did and had to scrap). They only need one robot to compete but have elected to build two that are identical so that “our programmers can always be programming, our builders can always be working on making things, improving it and iterating on it,” Ben says.

When it’s time to compete, robots from four teams will get onto the playing field, each powered by human drivers. Two teams will form an alliance for a match, and the robots will collect blocks and place them into baskets. Robots will also have the opportunity to lift off the ground and to work autonomously. The EagleBots aim to create the best robot for these tasks.

“For the last couple seasons, every season has pretty much gone up one level of competition,” Ben says. “After your league meets, you have your regionals, then you have the state qualifier, so there’s two levels of elimination. Then you have your state meet.”

“We’ve gotten to state twice now, and we’re kind of hoping to be able to go to Worlds this year,” he says. “We have a bigger team and have been able to spend a little bit more time on this year’s robot. We also have been working on a new drive system that’s a little bit unique that’s going to hopefully allow us a little bit better robot this year.”

So far this November, the team has competed in Solon and at City High and West High, winning five of their six matches. They are currently ranked first in their league, which covers a portion of the state from Iowa City to West Burlington. A few more events await them before the league tournament on Feb. 1 at West High.

However well the EagleBots perform at competition, the students will ultimately emerge winners.

“Our thrilling, sports-like challenges build their self-confidence and collaborative problem-solving skills and have a proven and lasting impact on STEM learning and interest,” the FIRST website claims. “Our participants and alumni gain access to education and career discovery opportunities, connections to exclusive scholarships and employers, and a place in the FIRST community for life.”

The students working together as EagleBots may not be typical kids. They may not grow into typical adults either.

And that’s a wonderful thing.

The EagleBots are sponsored by LACHerps, Washington State Bank, CIVCO, PCI, Hills Bank, 4-H, and SunnLu 3D printing.