Visitors gathered at the Spurlock Museum on Saturday afternoon for Women in Robotics with Ctrl-Z, an event showcasing student-built robots while highlighting the contributions of women in robotics and engineering.
Hosted in Spurlock’s Hundley Central Core Gallery from 1:30-3 p.m., the free event featured members of the FRC Team 4096 Ctrl-Z. Made up of high schoolers from the Champaign-Urbana area, the team introduced guests to the inner workings of their robots and shared stories of women who helped shape the field.
The robot the community team brought for demonstration was the “Frisbee Bot,” a robot originally built for the 2012 FIRST Robotics Competition game. Designed to shoot frisbees into a goal, the robot now serves as a demonstration tool at outreach events.
According to Ben Maki, visitor services coordinator at Spurlock, the Ctrl-Z team initially reached out to the museum about hosting this event. Maki said Beth Watkins, manager of exhibit interpretation and visitor experience at Spurlock, emphasized that the museum was “really happy” to collaborate and provide a venue for the demonstration.
“It’s kind of like a meet and greet,” said Emma Tong, a junior at University Laboratory High School and one of Ctrl-Z’s two outreach captains. “We talk to (visitors) about opportunities for robotics and also showcase our robot.”
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Although the robot couldn’t launch frisbees inside the museum, visitors could see its internal components up close while team members explained how they built the competition robots. According to Tong, building a robot for the FIRST Robotics Competition typically takes eight weeks from start to finish.
The team participates in competitions during the school year but also spends significant time on community outreach, including summer robotics camps and demonstrations for younger students.
“Most people see our team as just robotics,” Tong said. “But I think we’re much more than that. We’re a team that builds robots, but also encourages others to get involved with building robots.”
Tong explained why hosting the event at Spurlock felt like a natural fit.
“I came to Spurlock for a field trip last semester, and I thought it was a great place to learn about people and their histories,” Tong said. “In STEM, women are pretty underrepresented, and I just wanted to share some of the stories that women have had in robotics and put it in a place where other people share their stories.”
The event also aimed to encourage young girls and women to explore more STEM fields. Tong highlighted that encouraging young girls and women to get involved with STEM is important to her team.
The collaboration also aligns with the broader mission of Spurlock, which regularly partners with community groups to host educational programming.
“We try to host a lot of events because a big part of our mission is serving the communities of both the University as well as the broader C-U community,” Maki said. “Trying to emphasize and promote those voices in the community is something that we try to do a lot.”
While Spurlock primarily focuses on culture and history, Maki said events connected to science and technology still fit the museum’s mission.
“Culture embodies all sorts of things, such as technology,” Maki said. “We have a lot of different events that might not immediately pop to mind when you think about a cultural museum, but it’s still all very influential in people’s lives.”
For some visitors, the event offered a chance to rediscover an interest in robotics.
For Dheeraj Yerneni, a junior at the University of Illinois Chicago who was visiting the University for a conference, seeing the robot up close was particularly fascinating.
“The most interesting thing was the different components that go into building the robot,” Yerneni said. “They opened it up a little bit, and I saw the different parts and what was connected to what.”
Another visitor alongside Yerneni, Otgondulam Boldbaatar, a graduate student at UIC, said she was surprised to learn that the presenters were high school students.
“I thought they were engineering students at U of I,” Boldbaatar said. “When they said they were high school students, I was like, ‘Oh, that’s so cool.’”
Both visitors said the demonstration highlighted how robotics is becoming more inclusive.
“I’ve seen a lot of women excel in these areas: robotics, engineering,” Yerneni said. “The community is rapidly evolving.”
By sharing their experiences and explaining the robot’s design, the students gave visitors a glimpse into the collaborative work behind robotics competitions.
Beyond showcasing technology, organizers hoped the event would inspire people of all ages to explore robotics themselves.
“Don’t be afraid to go for it,” Tong said. “I joined the team and didn’t know anything, basically. But you shouldn’t be afraid to try something you don’t know much about.”
