Museum of Aviation hosts robotics tournament

The 13th annual Central Georgia FIRST Lego League Super Regional Qualifier was held at the Museum of Aviation Saturday.

FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Lego League is an international program for middle schoolers that pairs robotics with a competition.

“There were 35 teams from across the state,” said Wesley Fondal, executive director of Starbase Robins. “Each team can have up to 10 members, so there were approximately 350 students from across the state

(participating).”

The FIRST Lego League (FLL) is designed to get students interested and excited about the STEM (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) field.

This year’s theme was hydrodynamics, Fondal said. The teams were given differing challenges, and they then had to program the Lego Mindstorm robot to carry out the solution to the challenge autonomously.

The robots go out to complete the mission on their own and then return to home base, Fondal said.

“This year was hydrodynamics, water. They were given a challenge to find it, transport it or use it,” Fondal said. “The challenge mat has several different challenges centered around that, and (students) had to identify a problem within that theme and come up with an innovative

solution.”

Participating teams had three portions of the contest on which they were judged: research, the technical aspect and core values.

During the research portion, teams had to identify the problem and create the solution.

They programmed their robots to complete he challenge, which is the technical aspect presented to judges. They also had to show how they programmed the robot, Fondal said.

The final aspect of the challenge, core values, was about teamwork. Teams were awarded points based on all three aspects in order to advance.

This year marks the 13th year Starbase Robins has been host to the event. The first year was a regional competition whereas the other 12 have all been super regional.

The designation super regional means it is the second tier of the event, and teams that win the challenge go on to compete in the state level.

Judges were volunteers from the local area, Fondal said.

“We rely on volunteers in the local area,” Fondal said. “There were two judges from out of town. The judges have training, but they don’t really have to have a technical background. We have a rubric they use.”

The Lego Mindstorm robot is the basis of the challenge. It is a hardware-software platform based on the popular building blocks. The system includes a “brick” computer that controls the system and Lego parts to create the mechanical systems.

“It was pretty exciting to see all the students who came out and showed their work. This was the cream of the crop because it’s the second round of competition,” Fondal said. “It was nice to see them (students) excited about coming out and nice to be able to host it with the coming government shutdown. The kids loved the venue, and it was nice for them to show us what they learned throughout the year.”

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