Students go to battle with robots

The kids in the Robotics Showdown probably never knew that engineering could get that rough as robots tumbled and crashed during each elimination round. "Have you ever seen anyone do that before?" a robot pilot exclaimed.

In fact, organizers of the summer internship say that most of the kids had little knowledge of how things went from concept to marketplace. "Their experience was nil," says program coordinator, Pam Lindley. "A lot of them hadn't even heard of the manufacturing industry."

So for eight weeks, some spent in the classroom, but most in machine shops around town; the kids were able to experience the full manufacturing process, including all the hits and the misses. "It's a trial and error type of thing. We had a couple of other designs before this, and you know stuff didn't work, so you've got to improvise," team member, Jason Butkowski said.

For some teams it was back to the drawing board, but at the end, everyone came out a winner. "While you're doing it, you learn so much that time goes by so fast that you just like, 'Wow, I did this?'" says recent high school grad, CeeCee Turner.

The City of Phoenix along with 23 advanced manufacturing businesses sponsored the program, hoping to spark interest in an area that could see labor shortages in mechanical engineering in the future.