“My” First LEGO League (FLL) team which I have been coaching since August last year achieved a truly outstanding result at the regional competition on January 13th! The girls-only team “Albern Vierstein” competed with the “big” ones (9 to 16 years) for the first time. Accordingly, they embarked with humble goals – and went home with three nominations and a trophy! Especially their research project convinced the jury, and their robot design impressed favorably.
At FLL Challenge, teams of 2 to 10 students compete in four categories. A science project based on the season’s topic, the robot design, and the implementation of FLL values are judged by a jury. In the robot challenge itself they compete against each other and solve tricky task with their self-designed LEGO robots. In each category, the best four teams are nominated for a trophy which the best team takes home. However, each team can only win one trophy, so that it may happen that the second-best team is rewarded in a category.
While our team reached a great 7th place in the robot challenge, and thus bested eight other teams, the girls scored especially in the jury nominations. Teamwork was top, but they excelled with their research topic – how to teach blind kids their favorite hobby, dancing. With their presentation they could even leave old hands behind.
Robot Design surprises and convinces
Their robot design was especially amazing. The jury commented: “We’ve never seen a robot before which was built to drive in two poses.” In the video below you can see what is possible with this simple but smart configuration.
This day at OTH Regensburg was absolutely exciting and a great success. And the goals for next year have already been defined!