Novi Youths Participate in Maker Faire

For many high school students, summer vacation is a time to relax and take a break from learning. But for the group of Novi students and alumni who participated in Maker Faire this past weekend, summer is a time to go back to the garage to design and build engineering projects.

Maker Faire Detroit is a two-day, interactive event in which participants share their arts, crafts, engineering, food, music, science and technology projects. The event celebrates creativity and discovering and was held this past Saturday and Sunday at The Henry Ford.

For mentor and computer programmer Brian Smith, having the students participate in Maker Faire is just another opportunity for them to learn in a hands-on way.

“They’re using tools, they’re building stuff,” he said. “When I was growing up, all the kids I knew were tearing stuff apart and putting it back together and building stuff, and you don’t see so much of that anymore. What I really want them to get out of it is just that ‘Let’s tear it apart, put something together and figure out how to do this.’ ”

The team who worked on projects for Maker Faire includes drivers Tom Pawlicki and Angad Mehrotra and members Conor Boran, John Damrath, Rachel Damrath, Neil Haakenson and Bryce Paputa. Adult members include mentor and crew chief Brian Smith and mentors Dan Haakenson and Tammy Damrath.

The youth members have all participated in Novi’s robotics teams, which are independent from the school. The high school students and graduates participated in the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC), an international competition in which they are given six weeks to build a robot that can complete a a specific task, which changes each year.

The middle school students participated in First Lego League (FLL), a competition for elementary and middle school students. Each year, teams are given a challenge based on a real-world problem related to the sciences. As part of the challenge, teams must design and program Lego robots to complete tasks. They also must present their solutions in front of the judges and sometimes hundreds of people.

The students brought several projects to Maker Faire this year.

In order to bring a hands-on project to the fair, the team created build-a-bots, or small battling robots. Attendees of the fair were able to choose between two different sets of wheels—one for speed and one for power—then send their robot to battle with another.

Another project the team brought was a Power Wheels racing car, which took them more than six weeks to build. They took apart a child's Power Wheels car and combined it with pieces from a go-cart so that a one of them could race it around at The Henry Ford.

Maker Faire held a race for participants who created Power Wheels cars. Racing under the team name "Black Frog," the Novi students came in sixth place after completing 96 laps in the 75-minute race.

Real-world experience

Tammy Damrath, a computer programmer, got involved with robotics when her son joined FLL.

“I was hooked—just thought it was such a great fusion of technical skills and with a fun platform that I really saw him be engaged and problem-solving in the engineering process without even knowing it,” she said.

Damrath said the robotics competitions give her children opportunities they wouldn’t otherwise have had and help them prepare for the real world.

“It’s almost like a secret society,” she said. “Because you can go to a university and interview and say you were on FIRST Robotics, and right away, they know this kid can work under pressure, he can work with adults, he has had to make sacrifices,” she said.

For team members and recent graduates Pawlicki and Mehrotra, working on these projects for Maker Faire and FRC has given them leadership experience.

Pawlicki said he enjoys being on the team and likes having responsibilities.

“It’s a different set of skills,” he said. “You can always try to teach people how to lead, but until they do it, they don’t really learn what it means.”

Pawlicki said being on the team is like having a second job. During the school year, members would spend 20 to 24 hours per week working on projects.

“We spent more time on robotics than studying for school,” said Mehrotra.

Yet Pawlicki and Mehrotra said the experience they gained was worth the time sacrificed for other activities. Both boys are attending Kettering University in the fall.

Smith said the student competitions are valued and respected in the industry and by colleges.

“It’s like real life,” he said.

So much so that the stress and pressure of the competitions can be grueling for students, Damrath said. 

“To deal with that frustration, you can’t do it alone. You have got to work as a team,” she said. “Might as well accept that, or you’re going to fail.”