AUGUSTA – Spruce Mountain Middle School was represented by four robotics teams at the Maine State LEGO League Championships held at the Augusta Civic Center on Dec. 14 and received a number of awards at the event.
The event was hosted by Maine Robotics with 75 teams from across Maine competing with LEGO robots that students had designed, constructed, and programmed. Students had to also perform an oral presentation on their innovative solution to a problem based on this year’s theme of Nature’s Fury, which dealt with natural disasters.
“The Generators” team, consisting of members Hunter Baker, Elijah Blais, Peter Bussier, Trevor Haynes, Hunter Quirrion, and Bryan Riley, won the judges’ award that recognized them for solid efforts in all aspects of the competition, including robot design, performance, teamwork, and project presentation.
The award is also in recognition of the team’s ability to overcome challenges. Team member Bryan Riley became incapacitated by an illness that forced him to be house-bound just prior to the competition. The team utilized their school laptops to integrate Riley into almost all aspects of the day’s competition live from his home via Skype video messaging service.
During the team’s research presentation, the team had a slide show to illustrate their innovative solution to power outages caused by winter storms, which consisted of adding AC generators to automobile engines to provide homes with emergency electrical power. When Riley’s part in the presentation came up, the team seamlessly brought him up on the screen via Skype and he was able to make his contribution, as well as participate in the question-and-answer period following the presentation. They team also scored high marks at the teamwork judging, where they had to build a LEGO model of a lunar base and decide the most essential things needed for the base. Again, the team used Skype to make sure all of their teammates could be part of the action.
“Just Keep Swimming,” an all-girls team consisting of Brooke Bolduc, Destiny Daigle, Tanna Herlihy, Skyler Lewis, Alana McDaniel, Hallie Pike, and Sydney Schaffer, had a great day at the competition.
The team’s robot was in sixth place after qualifying matches, where the robot’s best score out of three trials places the teams for the playoffs. Even though five robots put up better scores in qualifying, Just Keep Swimming‘s robot proved to be very consistent and in the first round it was able to upset all robots and had the highest score of all 12 robots who qualified for the playoffs.
With teammates Brooke Bolduc and Sydney Shaffer at the controls, the robot scored another upset in the semifinals, knocking out the two highest scoring robots of the day. The team had a tough run in the final and ended up with second place in elimination competition.
Just Keep Swimming also nailed their research project presentation on their innovative solution to flooding on the Sandy River by Pike’s Farm in Farmington. The team met with team member Hallie Pike’s grandfather David Pike, who had a levee destroyed on his property in the 1970s due to a flood caused by an ice jam. The altered flow of the river inundated 15 acres of prime farmland.
The team’s solutions included mining gravel from the river to prevent floods, constructing a hydraulic house lift to move houses out of the way of flood waters, and a public awareness campaign. They received first place overall for their project. When all scores from all the judging categories were tabulated, the team took third place over all out of the 75 teams competing.
Other Spruce Mountain Middle School teams competing included the Purple Pancake Professors, consisting of Hannah Burhoe, Cody Greenleaf, Joel Hussey, and Michael Jones, whose project included the development of a model active flood mitigation barrier made from a LEGO NXT robotics kit.
Team Oblivion, including Melissa Bamford, Jared Holland, Bryce St. Pierre, and Orion Schwab was ranked 24th in robotics after qualifying, placing them in the top third, and their project was on tsunamis in Japan. Sixth-grade spirit team members Joni George, Roni Jo Morrison, and Noah Wells spent a great deal of time developing their robotics skills this fall and did a great job supporting the Spruce Mountain teams throughout the day. They plan to make big contributions to LEGO League next year.
There is also a “Rules Ace” competition at the event, which tests a member of each team on their knowledge of the 30-plus page rules manual and 37 online rules updates for the competition. Bryan Riley and Garret Smith passed the test and earned the award for their teams.
Team mentors that provided help this season included Spruce Mountain Middle School teachers Rob Taylor and Jay Lindsey, Verso Paper energy manager Joel Pike, parents Tina Riley and Kathleen Pike, grandparent David Pike, and town of Jay mechanic Dan Latham. Members of Spruce Mountain High School Robotics Team No. 3930 also provided the teams with inspiration and mentoring services. These students include senior Erik Taylor, junior Peter Chavez, and freshman Rachel Pike who each put in over 30 hours of mentoring time this season, as well as other Team No. 3930 members.
