Lego League Competition

The Lego League club began during the first few weeks of September and recently ended on December 14, 2014 when the First Lego League(FLL) competition was held.  This year there were two teams representing BSM, The Knights of the Universe, and the 8-Bit Knights.  There were five basic events during the competition that starts after the opening ceremony at 8:00: The Robot Runs, The Project Presentation, The Core Values Judging, The Robot Design and Programming Judging, and The Head-To-Head Competition.

The Robot Runs are three different attempts to complete as many missions as possible to get the maximum amount of points.  This year, there were several missions with each one varying.  The missions are certain tasks that the robot should be programmed and designed to do in order to win full points.  Each run is two minutes and thirty seconds, meaning that those who are running the robot must be quick.  It is quite stressful, but it gives the team a nice feeling if it is successful.

The Project Presentation is a part of FLL that is not as well known.  Basically, each team must consider the theme of the current year’s competition.  Afterwards, they must think of problems that could be solved.  This year, the theme was education for the future.  Teams had to think of ways to make education better for students. During the competition the team has to present their solution.  They needed to explain what problems it could solve, and that makes this part of the competition a bit difficult.

The Head-to Head is where teams compete against other teams to get the most points.  It is an elimination round.  Sadly, this year, both of the BSM teams lost their first Head-to-Head round.  However, this is only one part of the competition.

This year was quite stressful.  “We had NXTs, and most of the teams had EV3s, so that put us at a disadvantage”, said Declan Buggy, the captain of the Knights of the Universe.  “The table and missions weren’t as good”.

Brian Bianchi, a programmer for the same team agreed with him “The table was designed pretty poorly this year”.  The EV3 was a newer model for making robots.  It was more compact than the slightly older NXT, the model that BSM’s teams had.

“We are petitioning for EV3s next year though”, Declan said.  This year the theme was Education for the Future, but next it will be Trash Trek, which is about recycling.  For BSM, this was certainly an interesting year!