ENGINEERING a Legacy

With the excitement of all of the newly updated spaces on SA’s campus, particularly the robotics facilities, it seemed like the right time to reflect on how robotics became such an important part of Sewickley Academy’s curriculum and activities. It all officially began in 2010....

Actually, for William Sullivan, Jr ’14 (aka Billy), robotics has been a lifetime interest. For as far back as he can remember, and much to his parents’ dismay, Billy had been taking things apart and trying, not always successfully, to put them back together. Household appliances, electronics, toys – if it had a power button, he wanted to see just what made it tick, beep, buzz, whirl, and so on.

This interest in electronics and robotics, particularly when it came to his childhood obsession with vacuum cleaners, was recognized by Billy’s principal, Sister Christy Hill, when he was in seventh grade at Mount Gallitzin Academy, a private Catholic school. With her support, a young Billy set about starting a FIRST® Lego® League (FLL) middle school robotics team at Mount Gallitzin, the first step in what would be a rocky road in the years that followed. The effort included a fundraising campaign that allowed the school to purchase four $300 robots, four computers, and all necessary software. Billy lined up a mentor for the team whose father built and donated a competition table so the fledgling team could practice robot challenges. Though just getting started, Billy’s team made a great initial showing at the FLL Pittsburgh Regional Competition in December 2008 and went on to win the May Madness Challenge at the Sarah Heinz House in Pittsburgh’s North Side in the spring of 2009.

A short time later, the first of many obstacles in Billy’s quest to pursue a future in robotics occurred. He learned that Mount Gallitzin Academy was permanently closing. His beloved, supportive school and his competitive robotics team were now defunct. After investigating both public and private schools in the region, the closest Billy found to one with a robotics program was Sewickley Academy which had a small group of Senior School students competing on an independent team that used the school’s name but was not sponsored by the Academy. Mr. Bruce Houghtaling, Head of Senior School at the time, offered to connect Billy with the Evanko family which had two sons on the team and had offered their garage as the team’s meeting place. This essential opportunity was the deciding factor in leading Billy to become a Panther starting in Grade 8. His younger brother, Bradley, chose to follow Sister Christy to St. James Catholic School in Sewickley where she became principal. away, meaning an end to the unofficial robotics team. He was devastated.

Many of Billy’s former teammates from Mount Gallitzin had also enrolled at St. James Catholic School and were eager to maintain the momentum they had developed the prior year. Unfortunately, the small school did not have classroom or storage space available with the influx of students. However, Sister Christy entrusted all of the equipment to the Sullivans who allowed a hastily created independent team, including both Sullivan boys, to meet in their basement. The group earned a third place finish out of 42 teams in that year’s FLL Pittsburgh Regional Competition.

Billy turned to Sister Christy, who acknowledged that St. James would still be unable to sponsor a team in the 2010-11 school year, and gave Billy her blessing for the SA team to use the robots, laptops, and table originally acquired for Mount Gallitzin.

In the fall of 2010, SA’s Middle School FLL robotics team, the Robopanthers, was ready to compete. However, Billy was in Grade 9 and had moved up to the Senior School. He therefore served as a coach, and the team included Bradley Sullivan ’15 who had transferred to SA that fall as an eighth grader. The team also had the adult support of Billy and Bradley’s mother, Jennifer, along with Dr. Sour as faculty sponsor.

With the start of the 2009-10 academic year, Billy Sullivan excitedly began his first days of school on Academy Avenue, only to learn that the Evanko family would be moving

Billy still hoped to develop an FLL team at SA and approached the Head of Middle School at-the-time, Dr. Susan (Ratcliffe ’55) Sour. He explained his vision for the Academy to have a robotics team that would last long after he had graduated to be enjoyed by others who shared his passion for science, technology, and robotics.

A requirement for any club or activity at Sewickley Academy is the involvement of a teacher, and try as he might, Billy could not line up available faculty at that point in time. Eventually, Dr. Sour committed to sponsoring an FLL robotics team for the SA Middle School.

With only a few months together as a team, the inaugural Robopanthers participated in a competition at Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) in December 2010 along with 77 other teams. They finished an impressive 6th place in the robot challenges and 11th overall – more than enough to prompt notice from the SA community. By the Spring 2011 May Madness competition, the Robopanthers had acquired Mr. James Boone and Mr. Jon Riddle as faculty coaches and finished third for their programming skills and 7th in the robot challenges.

The next hurdle in Billy’s race to leave a robotics legacy at SA was budget. With only $600 allotted to this new team at Sewickley Academy, there was no way to purchase the necessary equipment to get started.

By the fall of 2012, the Middle School RoboPanthers earned a spot at the Grand Championship. The team’s rapid rise to recognition included the opportunity to host the FLL’s newly created scrimmage as well as the annual regional competition in December 2012. “It was kind of crazy to see nothing and then all of a sudden the school is hosting 200plus – there were probably 20 teams there,” said Billy. SA has continued to host FIRST® events annually since 2012 and has been hosting the Grand Championship each year since 2018, except when it was virtual in 2020 due to the pandemic.

But what about a team in the Senior School?

As Billy headed into his sophomore year, he was still seeking the opportunity to compete with a team of his peers at the Senior School level. The prior year, he had received details from FIRST® on creating a team. Once again, a faculty sponsor was required, and he would need the approval of SA’s Head of School. While things did not work out in Grade 9, by Grade 10 Billy had arranged, with the support of Mr. Houghtaling, to have Patricia DePra, the Regional Director for Western PA FIRST® robotics, speak during a Senior School announcements session to gauge interest in starting a team in the fall of 2011. The interest was definitely there, but the funding and the space were not.

Senior School-level teams compete in either FIRST® Robotic Competitions (FRC) or FIRST® Tech Challenges (FTC), not Lego® competitions, and they must build a functioning robot – an endeavor significantly more costly than the tabletop requirements of the Lego® teams. In fact, FRC competitions occur in arenas approximately 25’ x 54’ with robots weighing up to 150 pounds and extendable up to 7’ tall. FIRST® regularly allowed rookie teams to purchase an FRC robot kit at a deep discount, but since the team Billy had originally hoped to join with the Evankos had competed under the Sewickley Academy name, a new SA team would not be considered a “rookie.”

Space to work on and practice with such a large robot provided another conundrum for Billy and his potential Senior School teammates.

The solution was found when Billy and his mother contacted a robotics professor at Robert Morris University (RMU), Dr. Arif Sirinterlikci, who agreed to partner with SA so the team could utilize the university’s engineering lab after school. A student of Dr. Sirinterlikci, Charles Mura III ’09, who had been a member of the early independent SA team with the Evankos, eagerly stepped up to serve as a mentor.

Ms. DePra helped to secure a grant for Sewickley Academy and the Senior School team, the Whoa!Bots, named by faculty sponsor Mr. Ben Spicer, was on their way to building a robot and competing in the Pittsburgh Regional FRC event in March 2012.

“What really took it to where it is today,” Billy recalled, “was the creating of the robotics program at Gallitzin. It is what really allowed me to understand what it means to be on a robotics team, because I was never on a robotics team before, and what it is like to lead a robotics team and how you create a robotics team. Yes, I experienced hurdles, but I would say that after the first time I’d done it, what’s three more times?”

By the Spring of 2012, Sewickley Academy had sustainable robotics teams in both the Middle and Senior schools. Later that year, the Senior School Whoa!Bots chose to compete in FIRST® Tech Challenge (FTC) instead of FRC, which they continue to do today. FTC requires smaller robots which meant traveling to RMU would not be necessary, and instead, an 1,100 square foot lab space dedicated to robotics was established in the Oliver Science Building. In

January 2023, SA unveiled two newly renovated robotics labs – one dedicated to tech challenge robots and the other to Lego® robot design, development, and competition (see article on page 8).

Where is Billy Sullivan today?

After graduating from Sewickley Academy in 2014, Billy matriculated at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Worcester, Massachusetts, for the university’s first-of-its-kind bachelor’s degree in robotics engineering. Within four years he had graduated with distinction from WPI with two full bachelor’s degrees in Robotics Engineering (RBE) and Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE). “I now know why a lot of schools don’t have robotics as a sole degree, and it’s just because it’s so broad,” Billy said. “You basically took intro classes to robotics, CS, mechanical engineering, and dynamics, which is like an advanced physics class. The degree is meant to groom people to be managers and directors so they don’t need to know all of the nitty gritty, they just need a general understanding. That’s why I’m glad I did electrical engineering as well. But, if I had to do it again, I would do CS and robotics engineering just because there are not enough software engineers, and they’ve been saying that for 20 years in this industry.”

I was working on a project for New Balance during my senior year on a robot for their assembly line. Their skilled workers were retiring, and sewing was a dying art, so they were trying to use robots as a replacement.”

Billy is currently a Senior Software Automation Engineer at iRobot bringing his childhood love of vacuums and his passion for robotics full circle. “I was working on a project for New Balance during my senior year on a robot for their assembly line. Their skilled workers were retiring, and sewing was a dying art, so they were trying to use robots as a replacement. One of my team members, Sarah, already had a job at iRobot lined up and had developed some strong connections there. She recognized the effort I was putting into finding solutions and alternatives for New Balance and recommended me for a position at iRobot.”

Since starting with the company in July 2018 as an associate engineer, Billy has earned three promotions. “I don’t really touch physical robots anymore,” he explained. “I work on simulations, but the concepts are the same. My job is kind of cool. Every day developers introduce new code changes, and with each new fix or feature they may undo or break something else in the code. It happens all the time. So it’s my job to run thousands of simulations every night of model houses and model robots. The code that would typically run on real robots runs on these models. You can kind of think about it as a robot on a treadmill. It’s still getting the same sensor feedback as it would normally, but it’s all virtual. The robot actually does drive around in a virtual house and when it bumps into things it sends that data back to the code, and we do that to verify and spot check all of the changes that have been done. Every time a developer creates changes, we run the set of tests that my team works on.”

Billy credits Sewickley Academy for much of his preparation for college and his career. “I would say that my college was easier than my SA experience. I knew how to study and how to ask for help. How to seek out resources and manage my time…. Mrs. Levine was great in teaching me how to interact with professors, navigate college and ask for help.” He also noted appreciation for Mr. Blaser who offered him a summer job reimaging computers after graduation. “Lots of teachers at SA impacted my education and experience. There was Mrs. McCloskey, Mr. Spicer, Ms. Waz [Wazenegger], Dr. Cassie, Dr. Sour, Mr. Michaels, all of the math and science teachers.”

To show his appreciation, Billy returned to SA in April for the Academy’s first Career Week, during which he presented to a packed meeting room of Senior School students about blazing their own paths. He showed them examples of his work at iRobot, answered their questions, and told them about his 2014 senior project when he built a drone with image recognition software to track missing people. For students interested in following in his footsteps, he encouraged them to determine which area of robotics most interests them – computer science, mechanical design, etc. –and focus on finding a college that will support them in growing and developing their passions.

He also had the opportunity to tour the Academy’s new robotics facilities during his visit. Upon walking into the Senior School robotics room, he reflected on the space where he once worked at SA, “We had an old machine shop,” he said. “To walk in here and have everything organized and all of the tools easily accessible – the fact that there’s actually a field to practice with the robots – it’s amazing.” He was also envious of the Middle School Lego® robotics lab with facilities that he noted are so much nicer than the plywood tables they’ll use at competitions.

Having Billy visit on-campus labs that grew from his initial desire to launch a robotics program at SA was incomparable. Never underestimate the passion of a middle-school-aged student. He just might change the world for generations to come.