South Jersey all-girls robotics team has successful first in-person competitive season – Burlington County Times

MARLTON - We already know that girls can do it all.

But thisall-girls robotics teamis defining girl power with robots that are out of this world hoping to inspire other young girls to gain an interest inscience, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields.

Apart from being the head coach of Team Outer Galaxy, DeepakMandrekar is a dedicated father raisinghis teenagedaughters,Shruti Mandrekar andNidhi Mandrekar, to be confident in who they are. As a girl-dad, Mandrekar is aware of the inequities women face in navigating theworld.

But that didn't stop him andhis daughters from making it possible fortheir all-girls robotics team from successin a male-dominated competitive sport.

"This istheir second season.But the reason whyI made it is because I felt likethis is more to motivate the local children, especially local elementary and middle schoolsto have an interest towards robotics," Mandrekar said.

However, whatMandrekar didn't know is that whilehehad worked toput together hisrobotics team comprised of sixseventh- through twelfth-grade girls including his two daughters, the coronavirus pandemic would ultimatelycause FIRST Robotics, an international high school robotics competition, to go fully remote in its 2020-21 season.

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Although their first season as a team wasn't what they had expected, not only was Team Outer Galaxylooking forward tocompeting in-personfor the first time since their founding, the girls were also looking for a challenge, and this year they would get one with the opportunity to compete in the FIRST Tech Challenge.

The FIRST Tech Challenge,a robotics competition for students in grades seven through 12, pit teamshead to head indesigning, building, and programming a robot. Team Outer Galaxycompetesin South Jersey league within the New Jersey region often competing against teams who are older than their younger members.

"My team basically competes with most of the New Jersey highschools. Only 15% to 20% arecommunity owned teams and 80% are high school teams from New Jersey," Mandrekar said.

Mandrekar explained that once the mission is announced the teams must come up with a strategy and define how they want to build the robot. Then, the team is responsible for creatinga computer aided design, CAD, of how the robot will be built and what it will do. Then the fabrication process begins.

"They do the electrical setup of the robot, like all the wiring, and it's basically motors, wires,sensors and all of that. Then once the robot is built they program the robot using Java, they automate the robot using the sensors, so there's a lot of work that goes into preparation," Mandrekar said.

But the robotics are just one piece. Next, the team does outreach within their community to share their STEM journey and robotics with companies in hopes of gaining sponsors and even conducts workshops at local schools free of cost.

"They connect with the community.Even our team, they conduct workshops for the local elementary and middle school children around robotics, they show the LEGO robots, then they show this bigger robot to them,they demo so it'skind of inspirational to myself as a coach but at the same time, this is a good avenue for kids who do not have exposure to STEM robotics, or want to get into a good avenue tolearn more about the team, attend one of their workshops, and all these workshops are free, meaning where we go, there are no charges involved," Mandrekar said.

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Each team member hasa primary and a secondary responsibility that allows everyone to acquire skills in more than one area. Focus areas within the team include programming, design and build, strategy, outreach, professional connections, planning and finance. Team captain Shruti Mandrekar empowers eachteam memberto have aunique role on the team so that everyone has the opportunity to succeed in a specific area.

"I make sure that everyone has a lead role in something so that they're actively part of it, even if they're new, they get tolearn something new, but also be in charge ofsomething that they know a lot about and learn throughout the season," Shruti said. "And also making sure that all the new team members, which was most of our team this year, since a lot of them were rookies, making sure that they were able to acquire the skills that they needed, especially like programming and building to make sure they understood the game. So it's really a lot of delegating, but also helping people like guiding them and helping them troubleshoot."

Shruti also details what it's like to be on a competitive team with her family.

"It's a really like, unique experience. I feel like becausea lot of the timeswe're always discussinglike different and new strategies or newideas that we have at the dinner table sometimewe're able to collaborate like even outside of our team meetings,"Shruti said.

Outer Galaxy ranked third in their leagueafter an impressive run in the threetournaments prior to the South Jersey leaguetournament where the team was a Semi-Finalist Captain team.

The team also received the THINK awardwhich is given to the team that best reflects the journey the team went throughas they experienced the engineering design process during the build in the 2021-22 season.

The team also qualified for the state championship on March 6 and again were recognized with the THINK award as runner up. But the accomplishments don't stop there. In addition to winning three out of five of their matches at the state championship, Team Outer Galaxy had seven sponsors this competition season including sponsorships from companies like REV Robotics and TE Connectivity.

The team, Shruti explained, doesn't shrink against the all-boys and male-dominated teams.

"I don't think it's as intimidating but I do feel like sometimeswe have to put more emphasis on making sure that our ideas are communicated and are understood at the same level as other people's ideas. Because sometimes they do like disregard ideas that are given by girls, that's just sometimeswhatends up happening,"Shruti said. "But I know that when we speak to people, whether it's all guys or mixedthatwe make sure that our ideas areeffectively communicated so that we know that they know that we know what we're talking about."

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Despite challenging inequalities,Mandrekar says accolades from other coaches on the girls' performance has been uplifting.

"I got a lot of feedback from the other high school coaches during this tournament, and even at the state championships, like, 'hey, your team is in the first season, and they are doing so well.' And especially being all girls. It's really motivating feedback that you get from many of these school coaches."

Mandrekar adds that he also seen a notable differencein all of thegirls' confidence.

"This particular robot metal fabricatingand all is consideredmore like aboys thing and the girls have been doing it.They have become so confident across the season, they can they fabricate the parts on their own, that has helped builda lot of confidence in them and their abilities to even excel in this engineering field,"Mandrekar said.

Nidhi Mandrekar, the youngest of the two siblings on Team Outer Galaxy, says knowing that she and her teammates put their all into this year's competitive season brought her joy.

"I think my biggest accomplishment this season was definitely being ableto go to state knowing that all the effort that I put into it and like all the time that all of us put into it was able toget put into something that was it was really cool.It was really cool to see how it all came together," Nidhi said.

Nidhi is already looking forward to next season.

"I am definitely looking forward to more building becausebuilding ismore my strong suit. So I'm looking definitely more building andI also want to go into our programming too kind of like being able to broaden thetechnical stuff that I'm in. But alsobroadening the amount of like communications I do andjustoverall being able to learn more andgrow," Nidhi said.

As head coach, Mandrekar also wants to focus on enriching the girls' technical skills next competition season in addition to conducting more workshops at elementary and middle schools in Marlton.

"We can conduct Zoom sessions, or they can come to our base location andwe can conduct a workshop and along with a hands-on demo of the robot," Mandrekar said.

New team member recruitment is already underway for the 2022-23 competitive season.

To learn more about Team Outer Galaxy visit their websitehttp://outergalaxy.org/index.php.

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South Jersey all-girls robotics team has successful first in-person competitive season - Burlington County Times