Saturday was the First Lego League tournament for this year. The contest involves building and programing a robot and a presentation project about the theme for this year. This year the focus was on biomedical engineering. The 10-14 year olds group had to invent a new device for helping people Liam's group studied a heating/cooling jumpsuit. This project has to me presented to a panel of judges as a group...they also make presentations on the design and programing of the robot.
The robot has to be programed to do tasks on a playing field without the kids controlling it. Each team has 2 min 30seconds to get their robot to do as many tasks as possible. Each task is worth points and penalties (for having to bring the robot to the base by hand, breaking the course, etc.) are assessed by removing points. The tasks are themed to each challenge, this year they had to fix a broken bone, install a pacemaker in a heart, deploy a syringe, sort diseased cells, and so on. Liam's team high score was 130 (the highest for this year was 180).
It is fun can you tell?
Ready set go!! This is an excellent program and it is a great opportunity. We got to see some of the robotics program from Lathrop High School in action this year, larger bots using real metal parts on a more challenging course, Liam is already excited!
This program is totally cool! I'm so glad Liam found something that he is interested in. I'm really impressed with all the effort that goes into competing. Great job guys!
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