Competition is 'More Than Robots'

Fuzz’s daytime job is as systems engineering department manager for Raytheon Intelligence & Space, and Fatima is a former science teacher. As mentors, Fuzz and Fatima teach students skills that will be critical to their success in college and industry. The documentary also features two other mentors with an RI&S connection.

“What FIRST shows is that you have to work as a team to solve complex problems,” said Fuzz. “One person can’t fully design, manufacture, assembly, code, test, and drive a robot all by themselves. Students learn to work on a team and trust their team members to do their job.”

Since 2011, Fuzz has served as lead mentor for Team 4201 “The Vitruvian Bots” from the Da Vinci Schools in El Segundo, California. In 2019, The Vitruvian Bots, along with the other three teams in their alliance, won the FIRST Robotics World Championship. The Team 4201 also received the Chairman’s Award at the Ventura Regional that year and has won it three other times including in 2022.

The Chairman’s Award is FIRST’s most prestigious award, honoring teams that best embody the FIRST mission and are role models for other teams.

“I have always been proud of how our team promotes the mission of FIRST as we work to increase the STEM pipeline in our community,” Fuzz said. “As a hiring manager at Raytheon Technologies, we are starving for strong STEM talent.”

Unlike Fuzz’s team, Fatima’s Team 6904 “TeraWatts,” which she founded in 2017, doesn’t have the same funding and resources as The Vitruvian Bots. The TeraWatts’ students come from two high schools in South Central Los Angeles, a historically underserved minority community. Only 3% of residents 25 or older have a college degree, and 97% of students are under the poverty line, many living in government housing.

Despite these challenges, the team’s resilience and community outreach work, which includes running an annual summer camp, hosting a podcast, and designing enrichment devices for primates, has been recognized at FIRST events with three Judges’ Awards.

“While I love the robots and want our team to have a competitive robot, I am passionate about FIRST because it gives students hope,” Fatima said. “Our students work hard to make their community better, inspiring each other to go to college. All of our students have gotten into college, everyone in our team, and if you think about the 54% high school dropout rate in Watts, that’s a drastic statistic. Our team is literally breaking the inequity barrier. So, imagine what students can do in communities all over California and all over our country. That’s the impact of FIRST.”

FIRST is a partner in Raytheon Technologies’ Connect Up initiative, which in part seeks to develop a strong, diverse next-generation STEM workforce. Raytheon Technologies businesses sponsored about 250 teams in the 2021-2022 season and provided hundreds of employee mentors and coaches.

“We have in our own backyard, a great workforce that’s primed and eager to solve the world’s toughest problems,” Fuzz said. “And we’ve already seen that. I have already brought in 15 FIRST Robotics alumni into Raytheon Technologies, and I’m just one mentor. We have hundreds of mentors across just our El Segundo site, and thousands all across our businesses in the United States that are doing the same thing.”

Fatima agrees with Fuzz and believes the internships Raytheon Technologies offers FIRST students are a critical pathway into STEM careers.

“FIRST is helping us to find and cultivate the next Einstein,” Fatima said. “My kids are literally geniuses, and if they did not have FIRST, they would not have an outlet to show that or to grow their talent. The kids learn computer-aided design, how to code and all these other talents they wouldn’t have in a traditional public school.”

Fatima serves as co-lead mentor for the TeraWatts with other co-lead mentor Joana Perdomo, who makes  cameo appearances in the “More Than Robots” documentary.

Perdomo, has worked for RI&S for the past two years as a systems engineer working on F-15 and low-band programs in El Segundo. She strives to get into the mindset of her students and understand their day-to-day struggles.

“We’ve had students who have been homeless or in the foster care system or food insecure,” Perdomo said. “So, for a lot of our students, it’s difficult to come into a place and just think, ‘Here’s this engineering problem, let me solve it’ when they are hungry, don’t know where they will sleep or fear deportation. Every mentor must be conscious of the students they are working with.”

While Fuzz’s team, The Vitruvian Bots, is 70 strong and has its own machine shop, Perdomo’s team, the TeraWatts, consists of about a dozen students, and they don’t have a permanent workspace. They’ve bounced around to different buildings, worked in hallways and even in the Zubairs’ backyard. This season as in past seasons, The Vitruvian Bots have welcomed the TeraWatts into their workspace. It’s part of what FIRST calls “coopertition” – a concept and a philosophy that teams can and should help and cooperate with each other even as they compete.

“My students grow up in an environment where it’s difficult for them to see themselves going to college,” Perdomo said. “Being an engineer is something they maybe never thought about. So, the team is an opportunity for them to feel empowered that, ‘Hey, here’s this very difficult problem. I can solve it, and I can solve it on my own.’”

RI&S Intern Joy Uehara, who competed on Fuzz’s team from 2016 to 2019, also appears in the Disney+ documentary. Uehara is now studying Mechanical Engineering at the University of Southern California and will soon begin her master’s in System Architecting and Engineering at USC. She’s done two internships at RI&S and starts a third in summer 2022. Paying it forward, she spends 30 to 50 hours a week on mentoring FIRST robotics teams in her community, including The Vitruvian Bots.

“Yes, it’s a lot of time, and part of it is to gain experience in management and leadership, but in all honesty, I do this because I love it,” Uehara said. “I can definitely see the impact that I’m making on the students when I talk with them, when I see their growth and that’s just amazing for me to see. It makes me want to keep coming back all the time.”

Uehera won the Woodie Flowers Finalist Award at the 2022 Los Angeles Regional. The award recognizes mentors who demonstrate the leadership, ethical behavior and technical communication skills that were exemplified by the program founder, Dr. Woodie Flowers. Fuzz won this award at the 2019 Ventura Regional.

“FIRST Robotics shows employers that you’ve had real-life experience building, designing, troubleshooting, fixing, and breaking, all that stuff that you don’t get from academics,” Fuzz said. “I regularly receive feedback that FIRST alumni at Raytheon Technologies are way ahead of their peers when it comes to supporting and working in an engineering environment because they have the communication, collaborative and technical skills to succeed.”