Octagon Robotics duo get students excited about engineering

• Reprints

As robots explore radiation-exposed areas in Japan so that humans can stay safely away, Chicago-area students are competing to build their own sophisticated robots at a Midwest regional competition today.

Tinicko Griffin and Jennifer Ferstl-Griffin, the husband-and-wife founders of Octagon Robotics, are the mentors of one of the student teams, called Massive Attack, as part of their efforts to get children engaged after school in science, technology, engineering and math contests.

“I love technology, and I wanted to do something for the community,” said Tinicko Griffin, a native of Englewood and a former U.S. Marine who, along with his wife and former fellow Marine, started Octagon Robotics four years ago.

The program began with six students, and its teams have gone as high as 16 in size. The teams have competed in robot-building challenges in grammar, junior-high and high-school levels sponsored by FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), an organization founded by Segway inventor Dean Kamen. Critics have questioned the FIRST program’s high costs, in the thousands of dollars, for the robotic kits and competition-entry fees, but the Griffins have overcome such concerns with their perseverance and outreach for support.

Octagon Robotics’ current team of nine students hails from a variety of Chicago schools, including Whitney Young, South Shore and Walter Payton.

The team is vying to build a $9,000 robot using high-level technology and software-coding skills. They have spent Friday nights and Saturday afternoons at a warehouse owned by their program sponsor, JC Penney Co., concentrating on getting every detail just right.

This is the team’s first effort at the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) level for high school students, whose competition is taking place at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

This and previous teams have worked their way through building a robot out of LEGOs at the elementary level; building a robot with high-tech LEGOs with C-level programming at the junior-high level, and now creating a full-fledged robot.

“We love to work at this level,” Tinicko said.

The Griffins are working to create a program that would bring robotic, engineering, science and mathematics skill-building into the schools.

“We want to be that voice to pump up the sound — this is something that the schools should be doing,” Tinicko said. “Sports programs are great, but this is sports for the mind. Science and math are languages that everyone can speak. It should be something we promote.”

The Massive Attack team and other students involved in tech competitions heard encouragement from native South Sider and former Purdue University President Martin C. Jischke, when Jischke accepted the 2011 Washington Award from the Western Society of Engineers during the group’s Feb. 25 awards benefit at the University Club of Chicago.

Jischke grew up in the Englewood neighborhood, near 69th and Halsted, as the oldest of six children, working alongside his father as a kid at an IGA grocery store in Oak Park.

He recalled as though it were yesterday an incident 57 years ago that changed his life, placing him on a path to eventually becoming the president of two major universities, the chancellor and interim president of two others and an appointment to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. He is now retired and serves as a trustee of the Illinois Institute of Technology on the near South Side.

At age 12, Jischke was wowed by a 5-foot-6, 150-pound truck driver who won a $20 bet with the store’s butcher by carrying two hind quarters of beef — one on each shoulder, each weighing 160 pounds — into the refrigerated storage room and hanging them on a meat hook.

“I thought, ‘What a heroic Hercules of a man,’ ” Jischke recalled.

Yet when Jischke ran up to the truck driver to express his admiration, the truck driver told him that he was doing the back-breaking physical labor because he had to — and that a bright future hinged on getting a good education.

Jischke took the advice, and after graduating from public schools — D.S. Wentworth Elementary and Proviso (now Proviso East) High School — he became the first in his extended family to go to college.

He was able to pursue a physics degree at the Illinois Institute of Technology by obtaining loans and scholarships. His observations of his dad coming home too tired to eat and his own experience working long hours with his father served him well in obtaining his undergraduate degree. Yet he found time to play sports, be a radio announcer, run the homecoming celebration, serve on the student union board and be elected class president.

Jischke credits his late parents with encouraging him in his studies, since the Great Depression thwarted their career aspirations. He can cite by name the teachers who inspired and mentored him, from elementary through graduate school.

Team mentor Tinicko hopes to inspire, too. “If one child who comes through [the Octagon Robotics] program goes to college and gets a scholarship, it was worthwhile for me,” he said.

Perhaps that student will be the next Martin Jischke.