FARMINGTON – Moving from cigarettes to salmonella, students participating in a local LEGO League team are hoping to repeat last year’s success at the competition’s state-wide event in December.
LEGO League is an international competition utilizing courses and robots built out of kits offered by Lego Group. The company, which produces the LEGO toy line, provides teams with NXT robot kits. These kits are utilized by league teams to accomplish a number of tasks along an obstacle course. The robot runs off a program designed by the team members. Every team participating world-wide uses the same course.
In addition to being rated on a variety of activities on the robot course, teams also must make a presentation before three judges on a project they’ve researched and developed. The presentation, and robot course, are based off a theme. This year’s theme, entitled “Food Factor,” is about keeping food safe.
The Farmington team, “Sunnyside Up,” is comprised of six members of last year’s “SmokeBusters” team. Ben Andrews, Grace Andrews, Mitch Guillaume, Alex Morrell, Nicole Pires and Dylan Roberts were all members of that team, which took first overall place at the Augusta Civic Center in December 2010. That allowed the team to advance to the next level competition in Carlsbad, Calif., held at the LEGOLAND park north of San Diego.
James Guillaume and Thomas Marshal, both participants in Cascade Brook School’s program, join the team for this year’s project. Months of work (planning and programming a single maneuver for the robot took the group more than a week) will culminate in the state event on Dec. 10.
The team’s presentation, and accompanying research and preparation, focuses on salmonella in eggs and ongoing efforts to create biotechnology solutions for food contamination. Students conducted salmonella labs at the University of Maine at Farmington, testing different kinds of eggs for salmonella, and interviewed scientists.
The team’s winning robot last year had to be completely rebuilt; the course and accompanying objectives required a narrower, faster carriage. Additionally, team members noted, the tasks were now more complex. Rather than previous competition’s pass/fail objectives, this year featured degrees of success. While achieving a partial-success might be relatively straightforward, higher levels of success, and a higher accompanying score, is much more difficult. The robot has two and a half minutes to complete the objectives.
Jan Roberts, one of the four team coaches, said the league promoted team-building and problem-solving. At San Diego, the SmokeBusters saw teams sponsored by Boeing and Disney, but were able to hold their own thanks to the even playing field.
“You would hire any of these kids,” Roberts said. “They solve problems.”
The other three coaches are Linda Beck, Jim Guillaume and Ellen Roberts.
YAY for Lego League and for the coaches that continue to support this team!!!! Best of luck!!
Very proud of my son Alex and the rest of Sunnyside Up for their hard work and dedication. These children have dedicated significant amounts of their free time after school to this task. They will be the future leaders in whatever they decide to do with their lives and again I just want to express how proud of them I am.
Alex and Mitch – good luck from the Katahdin Community at MBMS!!!!!!!
Way to go guys! Keep up the great work – you make Mt. Blue proud!
Congratulations to these kids for their hard work and dedication. It would be a good thing if Lego League could be open to other kids, too. My child has tried to get involved for 3 years. I talked to the schools and to some of the coaches. But we always get told that there’s no more room on the team. Maybe someone could tell me how other kids can apply and be a part of this opportunity.