Sept. 12

Innovation road show: robotics and urban agriculture programming
HITS ROAD DURING FALL QUARTER
 

Picture a Nebraska postcard scene. Sun-drenched farmland spans a vast horizon lined with rows of soybeans. A farmer patiently runs a tractor with a sprayer, rolling through acres upon acres for hours. The sprayer indiscriminately applies herbicide over everything growing in the field to kill off spots of weeds attempting to crowd out the crop.

Now picture the same field with unoccupied, autonomous equipment passing through it. Cameras are mounted along the sprayer line. Guided by artificial intelligence, the tractor travels the field with its equipment scanning and identifying in milliseconds whether what shows up in the viewfinder is a soybean or a weed. When a weed is recognized, a targeted blast of herbicide covers the exact location of unwanted growth.

Rather than spend the hot, humid day in the cabin of the tractor, the farmer weeds through and pulls data on a tablet, monitoring a small fleet of robotic workers, making programming adjustments where necessary to increase productivity and cut operating costs.

Artificial intelligence. Robotics. Automation. Technologies once presented as futuristic ideas in sci-fi books and movies now affect the experience of everyday life. They’ll only become more commonplace in the years ahead — especially in an employment landscape shaped by an aging and shrinking workforce.

Look no further than the robots chopping avocados at select Chipolte restaurants, the drones that are delivering Amazon packages in College Station, Texas, or the autonomous Waymo cabs that caught the attention of MCC project manager Randy Veach.

Veach manages Metropolitan Community College’s participation in the $1 billion Build Back Better Regional Challenge (BBBRC) federal grant program. Funding was awarded to 21 recipients throughout the nation, regional coalitions of partnering organizations intended to “enable each region's economic transformation and competitiveness” for the future of work.

In 2022, Invest Nebraska Corporation, an organization focused on supporting the growth of the state economy, was awarded $25 million to establish the Heartland Robotics Cluster. HRC was created to position Nebraska to be one of the leading research and workforce development centers in the country for robotics and automation in the agriculture and advanced manufacturing industries. As a partnering organization, MCC, along with Northeast Community College, will expand robotics instruction in the state through education, community outreach, competition and workforce training.

During its beginning stage of participation, MCC developed a workforce training curriculum in robotics and automation. Through a progression of noncredit programming, by the close of the 2027-28 academic year, the College expects to achieve the following outcomes:

• 540 K-12 students participate in school robotics competitions
• 64 students receive a two-year degree at MCC in Robotics/Prototype Design
• 50 new robotics/automation jobs created in the North and South Omaha communities
• 18 urban farming and agricultural technology community outreach events
• 152 people participate in learning and educational outreach events

Going on tour

Veach joined MCC Community and Workforce Education last year to help engage the community and support the College’s new offering of noncredit robotics camps, courses and immersive learning experiences for kids, teens and adults. All programs are designed to demystify robotics — and build awareness of the sustainable employment opportunities that come with their emergence in the workplace.

MCC offered College for Kids and Teens robotics camps for free at MCC at Yates Illuminates and the Fort Omaha Campus over the summer. Programming continues to ramp up this fall, with Veach taking robotics and urban agriculture on a road show to each MCC campus in a decked-out trailer with a fully equipped workshop for hands-on robotics demonstrations. Local schools can even request to have the trailer visit their school for an on-site field trip. The road show will also make appearances at community events.

Veach will be joined by two high-tech sidekicks during the tour, Gizmo and Diablo. Gizmo is a robotic dog that can complete dozens of commands with obedience that would humble most pet owners. It looks like a robot but moves with animal-like precision.

Diablo is a wheeled-leg robot that functions like a miniature all-terrain vehicle with customizable applications for completing tasks such as materials transport, surveillance and inspection in industrial settings.

Controlling the movements of both robots with a programmable remote that looks like a video game controller, Veach demonstrates their capabilities with the goal of showing anyone who interacts with Gizmo or Diablo that robotics is approachable.

The style of learning also helps to dispel misconceptions about the required technical ability to understand automation. Through “structured play,” Veach said students are introduced to the foundations of automation — engineering and programming.

“It’s all about refining the teaching to make it easier for them and get them excited about what they’re learning,” Veach said.

Two tuition free College for Kids LEGO® Robotics courses offered this fall will teach students ages 8 to 12 how to program, engineer and build robots to complete obstacle courses and accomplish small tasks. Another course, offered to both College for Kids and College for Teens participants, will teach the fundamentals of programming languages.

Two seven-week Community Education classes for adults promote urban agriculture and indoor gardening practices. Participants will learn to operate and program FarmBots — robots that automate planting, watering and weeding tasks for home gardening. They will also learn how sensors provide data on soil health.

In a course hosted at the state-of-the-art MCC Prototype Design Lab, attendees will explore sustainable agriculture, plant nutrition and water conservation techniques that can be used year-round in a hydroponic indoor garden tower, which they provide using 3D printers.

While Veach was passing through a camp this summer at the Center for Advanced and Emerging Technology on the Fort Omaha Campus, a participant from Girls, Inc. stopped “Mr. Randy” to show him how she was able to get her robot to move around an obstacle along its path after a couple of attempts that didn’t quite work.

A smile spread across her face as she and Veach watched the robot steer itself away from the roadblock. The resilient approach that produced the successful result lit Veach up, too.

“LEGOs are fun, but they also teach you the basic concepts of engineering. You help them see that it does take some extra effort, but you can make a robot do what you want it to do,” Veach said. “That’s when you see that light come on and hear them say, ‘Wow, robotics is so cool.’ Sometimes when camp is over, they don’t even want to go home.”

Veach said people tend to think the technology involved is extremely complicated, but the proximity sensors elementary school students use in their LEGO kits are the same accident prevention technology auto manufacturers place in today’s cars.

With the baseline knowledge they’ve learned from the camps, Veach uses Gizmo and Diablo to show them what the next level of training looks like.

Growing Nebraska student participation in robotics competition

Robotics offers a blend of engineering, programming and innovation crucial for tomorrow’s workforce. As industries increasingly automate, skills in robotics empower students with sought-after abilities, opening doors to careers in manufacturing, health care, automation and beyond.

In partnership with HRC, MCC is the sponsoring organization for all FIRST® Tech Challenge (FTC) robotics competitions in Nebraska. The goal is to increase student participation in the state, especially among people living in urban areas. Participation in robotics competitions has historically been cost-prohibitive for underserved populations. Federal grant funding removes that barrier. MCC gives the program statewide structure, functioning like an organizing body for the STEM learning initiative.

FTC competitions blend sports with science and technology in team competitions. Using critical thinking and technical skills, students build and program industrial-size robots to complete challenges. Students design their own robot using 3D-printed parts, computer-aided drafting and milling equipment.

Veach said FTC robots get students “thinking outside the box.” The exposure they gain and proficiency they develop using programming languages such as Python are also valuable. Programming is a technical skill employers are paying sustainable wages to bring in-house instead of outsourcing. These careers are attainable with up to two years of education and training and include stackable certifications for advancement.

Veach recounted an FTC team in Norfolk that designed a new robot from scratch to take to FTC Worlds 2024, the organization’s pinnacle event.

“The concept was all in their heads and they designed exactly what they wanted using [computer-aided drafting] in a month. I guarantee every one of those kids is going to be working in an engineering firm in the next four years,” Veach said.

Veach said the exposure they gain working with the robots through FTC competitions before they finish high school puts students ahead of their peers enrolling in architecture and engineering programs. They’ll have extensive knowledge working with computer-aided drafting to design their robots while most first learn about it from a textbook in their first year of college.

The opportunity for Nebraskans to embrace robotics is huge, Veach said. The state’s two largest industries, agriculture and manufacturing, are in the most need of workers. There aren’t enough people seeking work in these industries to fill job openings.

According to the latest available census data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the average age of agricultural producers is 58.1 and the number of producers who are 65 or older grew by 12% between 2017 and 2022.

Veach along with Tony Jeffery, Community and Workforce Education manager of Community Outreach and Development, are meeting with employers throughout Nebraska that are implementing automation into their operations. In doing so, they gain insight on the skills organizations need from people entering these fields, which then inform programming and curriculum as the robotics and urban agriculture offerings evolve at MCC.

Part of the plan is for Nebraska students involved in robotics programs to have opportunities to visit state organizations integrating automation into their operations, giving them a view of the employment landscape that awaits, and picturing themselves in it with the technical skills to thrive.

“Society’s moving forward. You have to move forward with it because it’s not going to sit still,” Veach said. “MCC is a great place to get in there and get the skills that get you in the door. You can learn these skills in anywhere from nine months to two years, and employers are looking to hire people with them immediately.”

Visit mccneb.edu/CE for more information on MCC Community Education offerings.