Houston, we have liftoff

Mumbai-based Team Paraducks wins Turkey Regional in FIRST Robotics Competition, secures spot in World Championship in Houston after dominant performance.

Team Paraducks, a Mumbai-based robotics squad, won the Haliç, Turkey Regional on Thursday in the FIRST Robotics Competition, earning a place at the World Championship in Houston. Established in 1992 and short for “For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology”, the FIRST Robotics Championship (FRC) is among the most revered robotics competitions for high school students globally and features over 7,000 teams from around the world. Team Paraducks consists of 20 students from nine different Mumbai schools.

Houston, we have liftoff

While this isn’t India’s first foray into the grand finale in Houston, it is the first time that an Indian team has qualified for the World Championship in such dominant fashion — winning the Haliç final outright (against teams that included fellow Mumbaikars Team Sigma) and snapping up the “Excellence in Engineering Award” in the process.

The road to Houston

“Regionals are held across the world, and around 60 teams participate in each of them, with only the best two teams from one alliance (made of three teams) going through to the finals,” team mentor Meenal Majumder told Hindustan Times from Istanbul, “And Team Paraducks’ alliance won the best-of-three finals by a score of two to nothing.”

Now, despite what the score-line in the Haliç finals suggests, the team’s journey through the regionals was anything but smooth. “Each team plays a total of nine matches to see who qualifies for the semi-finals stage,” the Team Paraducks mentor explained, “After losing two early matches, the team were languishing near the bottom of the table and left with quite an uphill task ahead.”

Co-captain of the Paraducks, Tara Guha Thakurta recalled, “The toughest part of the competition was when we lost right at the start. It brought everyone’s spirits down, and it felt like we were already defeated. We were really discouraged after that setback, and it took a while to feel hopeful again.”

True character shines through during adversity, it’s said, and that was what Majumder noticed among the team. “Instead of making them lose their focus and composure, the two early defeats motivated them,” she said, “They took each match as it came, thinking on their feet and solving problems as they emerged.”

Before long, the team went on a winning run and found themselves in the semi-finals and next, the finals. “As FIRST founder Dean Kamen once said, ‘We’re using robots to build kids,’ and I watched this transformation happen. You see, robots never work the first time. They fail, so you sit and persevere and then you rise from that failure as long as you willing to put in the effort,” Majumder said.

The World Championship takes place between April 17 and 20, and preparations are already in full swing. “We have learnt from mistakes and are working on making our robot more efficient, consistent and reliable so that it can perform well and not throw up any surprises,” Majumder said. “And we’re also doing some scouting — which entails watching video footage of matches featuring other teams — to observe the other teams, their tactics and strategy, and figuring out how we can beat them.”

For Guha Thakurta, the chance to meet more experienced and skilled teams is among the biggest draws of the World Championship. “We see it as a chance to learn and improve our own robot for the future,” she said. “It’s exciting to think about what we can do to make our robot even better, and we’re eager to see how we can grow from this experience.”

On mentorship and more

An engineer and MBA by education, Majumder is a career banker — most recently as Chief Risk Officer at ICICI Securities — who went on to found edtech startup The Innovation Story in 2021. She explained, “It was around two-or-so years ago that I switched [from banking] to education. And over this time, I’ve been working with other mentors and personally mentoring children in the fields of AI, robotics, drone technology etc.” She is among several experts from The Innovation Story who work with Team Paraducks.

“The aim of The Innovation Story is to empower students in the field of technology, make them ready for careers of the future and be technologically savvy,” Majumder elaborated. One of the key methods of mentorship, she said, is to go through competitions. This way, children are given a goal or objective, for which they need to learn skills like CAD and robotics engineering. But the overall process is as fun as it is educational.

A major source of motivation for her to take up mentorship was her own experience about 10 years ago. “Back when my daughter was in Grade 8, she wanted to join a robotics team — the makeup of the group was 40 boys and one girl, my daughter,” she recalled. As a point of comparison, Team Paraducks currently comprises nine girls and 11 boys.

“I used to accompany her for her sessions partly to make sure she didn’t drop out because there were no other girls,” Majumder added, “And what I saw there was children watching their ideas come to fruition. When the robot finally moves, it’s amazing to watch a piece of metal come to life, and in the process, shy children find their respective voices.”