Grand Slam! UMKC Students Help Build a Robot to Throw Royals First Pitch

Initiative is part of the university's partnership with the Kansas City Royals

Antonio Sea and Denis Sumarokov were greeted with perfect ballpark weather as they stepped into Kauffman Stadium. As the sun cast a bright glow over the baseball field, the University of Missouri-Kansas City computer science students watched the middle and high school students they had been mentoring step up to the mound. The ceremonial pitch was about to start.

Sumarokov and Sea had been preparing for this day for months.

As part of the UMKC higher education partnership with the Kansas City Royals, they mentored local students for "Bring Out the Bots." The Royals STEM initiative challenges middle and high school students to create a robot to throw the first pitch at the team's annual School Day at The K.

Sea and Sumarokov worked with students from WeCode KC and KC STEM Alliance to conceptualize and build the robot. They were there as students got a technical brief from the Royals, designed sketches and helped teach them coding skills with software, such as Python, to power the robot.

"I've been helping with WeCode KC for about two years now," Sea said. "I was in a lot of robotics programs growing up and being able to impart that knowledge back upon the community of kids is a good feeling for me."

While they were there to share their knowledge, it turns out they had some to gain too.

"Those kids are really smart, so sometimes they teach you more than you teach them," Sumarokov said. "As an electrical engineer, we have to solve a lot of problems. This experience helped not only me, but also the kids, in terms of learning how to solve problems that have not been solved before and create new ideas."

A week before game day, students had the chance to test out the robot at the MLB Urban Youth Academy. After some trial-and-error, and figuring out Wi-Fi connectivity issues, the robot successfully threw the ball over the mound.

They were ready for game day.

With thousands of students across the Kansas City metro in attendance for School Day at The K, the stadium was buzzing with excitement.

Nervousness and anticipation filled the air as a group of students who worked on the robot had the exclusive chance to step out onto the mound. They began talking in hushed whispers as they controlled the robot on the field, before activating it to launch the first pitch.

As Sluggerrr caught the ball, cheers could be heard from their teammates who watched the action from the stands.

"Seeing the students' hard work come to fruition at School Day at The K was exciting," said Kevin Truman, Ph.D., dean of the School of Science and Engineering. "I'm glad the partnership with the Royals provided our students with mentoring opportunities that will serve as a positive impact in their future careers."

Plans are already in the works for next year's pitching robot.