Kids compete at regional Lego robotics competition

CLEVELAND – Forty-nine teams with names like Blocktor Who and Zombie Robocops crowded Lakeshore Technical College over the weekend to take part in the third annual Lakeshore FIRST Lego League regional competition.

"It's impossible not to have pop culture nerd references in robotics," Sage LeGault, a member of the Droid Rage robotics team based in Valders, laughed. "It's like a thing."

Each team of elementary-age children built a Lego Brick robot to solve a set of 12 challenges laid out on a 8-by-4 game board. Teams had 2.5 minutes to complete as many challenges as they could, with each challenge assigned a point value.

The robots competing Saturday were as varied as the teams, and kids used their imagination and creativity to solve complex engineering problems on the game board.

"What's special about our robot is it has a parallelogram arm," sixth grader Aiden Coen, a member of the St. Peters Brick Busters team from East Troy, said. "We also have a pulling arm, because in one of the missions you have to pull something back. We really tried to get the most out of our motors."

The regional competition is part of the FIRST(For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Lego League, an international program designed to engage students in science, technology, engineering and math related activities by challenging them to design robots using Lego bricks.

Approximately 22,840 teams made up of roughly 160,000 students participated in the program worldwide this year.

"The whole thing really is global," Arrow Guetschow, a mentor in the program, said. "It's amazing when you go (to the world competition) and there are Japanese teams and Indian teams."

More than robots

In addition to robot building, the FLL program includes a research and presentation component based on a theme, which this year is focused on creative ideas to improve the learning experience.

The Do Not Attempt team based in Valders developed a project to improve the way a hearing impaired student could learn to play an instrument in a group setting. The team's idea is it insert an accelerometer into a director's baton, which would then connect via Bluetooth to an ankle bracelet worn by the student or a shoe insert that would vibrate based on the baton's movements.

"Every time the director creates a beat, they would feel it," Georgia Zutz, an eighth grader from Valders said. "There is a little boy at (a team member's) church who loves music. To feel the music he puts his hand on the speaker. We decided we wanted to do something to help him. He was an inspiration."

The Lego Dominators, from the Hortonville School District near Appleton, developed a new way to teach the periodic table using colored Lego Bricks.

"In fifth grade we all had the same teacher and our way of learning the periodic table wasn't that fun," seventh grader Paige Honeycutt said. "We thought it would be good to come up with a new idea to teach the periodical table because it is so important."

They polled their fellow students and found that most kids enjoyed hands-on learning, so they built a periodic table using Lego bricks to enable students to interact and build their own tables.

"There are extra Lego in the kit so you can build your own molecule," seventh grader Cade Wagner said, demonstrating his idea by snapping together three bricks to make a water molecule.

In a third part of the FLL event, the Teamwork Challenge, Teams were judged on teamwork and communication.

"They test a team to see how well they work together," Gabe LaFond , a member of the STEMpunk robotics team based in Mishicot, said. "They lock out the mentors and parents and it is just the team and a panel of judges. Then there is a hidden game that you don't get to find out about until you're in the room. Then you work as a team to get it done."

First Lego League teams competing over the weekend had a one in three chance to move on to the district competition in Mukwonago in mid-Dec. From there, teams have a chance to move on to the state and world competition.

"Lego League is one of the best experiences I've ever had," Zutz said. "It's just so much fun. You learn so much and meet great people; you have future engineers all around you."

Building progress

From the Lego league, students can continue into upper-level FIRST programs such as the FIRST Tech Challenge and FIRST robotics competition.

The FIRST Tech Challenge is intended for students in grades seven through nine and increases the difficulty of the robotics challenges. Students use "Tetrix," an erector-set style building system, to create robots that feature more powerful motors, sensors, and an advanced programming language.

"FTC is kind of the transition period between FLL and FRC," LaFond said.

From FTC, students who continue to show an interest in STEM subjects can move into the FIRST Robotics Competition in high school. The pinnacle of the FIRST program, FRC allows students the most creative freedom to build a robot using any off-the-shelf parts they can find.

Participants from the two programs were on-hand at LTC over the weekend to demonstrate their robots to the younger FLL teams.

The FIRST robotics program officially begins the first Saturday in January, and teams have six weeks to design, engineer, and build a robot. Teams do not find out what their challenge will be this year until January.

"We take off for work months in advance for that day," LeGault said. "It's like nerd Christmas when we get to find out."

FIRST, founded in 1989 as a nonprofit organization dedicated to inspiring young people to pursue interests in science and technology, has seen success locally. Both the Droid Rage and STEMpunk robotics teams have advanced to the world championships in recent years – and the program has inspired students to continue into careers in engineering.

"For the first two and a half years of high school I took basically music and art classes," Quinten Lisowe, a student from Two Rivers on the STEMpunk robotics team, said. "After joining robotics, I moved from music and art to 100 percent engineering. I want to go for mechanical engineering and minor in French."

LeGault said she joined FIRST robotics with the intent to do the marketing for the team, but found she enjoyed working with the electrical wiring instead.

"I did it because I wanted to do the graphic design and marketing part of it. Little did I know I ended up hating that," she said. "One day someone said 'come on out to the shop and we'll show you how to wire the robot.' I thought it was cool, and now I'm the electrical captain."

Phillip Bock: (920) 686-2966 or [email protected]