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On Saturday, January 20th, the gym at Benilde-Saint Margaret High-School was packed.   Kids filled the bleachers, cheering and waving signs in support of their team, and music blared over the loudspeaker.  On the floor, team members watched the athletes anxiously as they raced against the clock.  But these aren’t your typical athletes—they’re robots.

 

These students and robots were part of the Minnesota State Championship FIRST Lego League Tournament.  Each year, thousands of kids from around the world compete on teams of between two and 12 members.  For six weeks, they work on designing an autonomous robot made out of Lego.  This robot has to perform certain missions, such as knocking over white Lego pieces while ignoring red pieces, or moving Lego “molecules” to a specified location.

 

Each year, the program has a theme, such as “Ocean Odyssey” or “Mission Mars”.  This year’s theme was “Nano Quest”, so all of the missions performed by the robots represented applications of Nanotechnology.

 

In addition to working on their robots, teams also prepare and present a research project.  According to FIRST’s website, this year’s theme required kids to “Explore a current or potential application of nanotechnology.  Learn what scientists are facing in improving upon the existing application or making the potential application a reality. Design an improvement for the existing nanotechnology, or choose a potential application that faces a challenge and solve it.”

 

Teams found that Nanotechnology could be used to solve all kinds of problems, from water supply in third-world countries to detection of cancer cells to steroid use in professional sports.

 

After weeks of preparation, teams compete at regional tournaments.  There, they present their research project to a panel of judges and their robots compete to see how many of the missions they can complete in two and a half minutes.  Teams are also judged on teamwork and the design and programming of their robot.  The teams who receive the highest overall score advance to state tournaments and the best of the best go on to the World Lego Festival.

 

This year, many TPS students participated in FIRST Lego League teams, including Garrt Navarette.  After placing third at their regional tournament, his team, the Circuit Breakers, went on to the Ohio State Championship on January 15th.  There, the seven member team placed twelfth overall and won the Martin Luther King, Jr. award.

 

Although the team mainly shared the work, Garrt did have the responsibility of writing the PowerPoint presentation for the teams’ research project on Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion.  This was Garret’s first year to compete with FLL, but he says that he’d choose to participate again.

 

“Although the research was hard, the robot was a lot of fun,” he said.

 

TPS students Chase Billing, Jonathan Daudelin, and Isaac Daudelin are members of team Built on the Rock, and TPSer David Daudelin serves as their mentor.  In only their second year of competition, the team had an outstanding performance at the New Jersey State Tournament.  With three perfect scores of 400, the team won both the first place Robot Performance award and the Champion’s award.  Now, they are eligible to compete at the World Lego Festival in Atlanta, Georgia in April.

 

The Daudelins decided to get involved in FLL after Jonathan found out about it on Lego’s website. 

 

David says, “Jonathan really enjoyed building with the Lego Robotics Invention System, and I was very much involved in computer programming, so my mom thought it would be a unique opportunity for us to participate in this competition, which involved both of these areas we particularly enjoyed.”

 

Last season, David served as the team’s lead programmer, but was too old to compete this year.  So he became the team’s mentor instead, organizing the schedule, designing the team shirt, producing a trailer of the robot, and creating and managing the team website.

 

The team decided to present their research project on stain-resistant fabric.  They found that Nanotechnology enables companies to make fabric which is completely water and stain resistant.

 

“It’s really an amazing subject,” said David.

 

Although they knew that their robot had performed well in practice, winning the State Tournament came as a pleasant surprise.  Built on the Rock was able to repeat their feat at an unofficial tournament sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania on January 26th.

 

David explained the reason for the team’s success: “Ultimately, we wouldn’t have been able to do anything apart from God’s help. Every meeting, we start by asking for his help and praying that we’d be able to please him in all we say and do. And put simply, I think the reason we were able to do so well is because he answered that request. Another big factor, I believe, is due to the sacrifice our parents make in home educating us. Home schooling has allowed each of us to pursue our passions (Jonathan with robots, Isaac and Timothy with Lego’s, and myself with programming) in a way that we never could have if we were enrolled in public schools. Even though we did all our regular school work while preparing, we were able to spend our free time working on it and also, arrange our schedules so that we’d have time on Fridays for our team meeting.”

 

He adds that he’s found FLL to be a very comprehensive program: “Several things we all have learned as a result include teamwork, public speaking, problem solving, research projects, building projects, programming, time management, PowerPoint presentations, and so much more. If anyone is interested in any of these areas, this is a great program for them to get involved in.  It’s a lot of fun getting together with your friends each week to work on a project like building a robot, and the actual competition itself is extremely exciting.”

 

For a complete list of TPS students who won awards with FIRST Lego League, see this month’s edition of Shards, and to find out more about FIRST Lego League, visit their website.

 

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