On Saturday, December 8th at Cinco Ranch Junior High, the second annual FIRST LEGO League robotics Qualifier Tournament was held. From all over the Houston metro area, robotics teams of 4th to 8th grade students competed in the tournament. To collect board games for the Krause Children’s Center in Katy, team Cryptonite also organized a tournament toy drive.
To design, build and program autonomous robots using LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT technologies, FIRST LEGO League teams of two to 10 members work alongside adult mentors and create an innovative solution to a problem as part of a research project.
Where students explored the topic of aging, this year’s competition was the SENIOR SOLUTIONSSM Challenge. As the team with the highest combined score from all elements of the competition, an independent team from the Cy-Fair area, team “Bud-Botics”, won the First Place Champions Award. The award for Robot Performance was also awarded to them.
The Second Place Champions Award was awarded to team “Beck Tech”, from Katy ISD’s Beck Junior High. In the Lone Star FLL Championship Tournament, which takes place on February 23, 2013 at John H. Reagan High School in Houston, both Bud-Botics and Beck Tech, as First and Second Place Champions, will advance to compete.
FLL Teams are judged on each of the three parts of the FLL Challenge: The Robot Game - the performance of their robot in head-to-head competition, along with robot design and programming; The Project - a research project and presentation; and FIRST Core Values – for how well a team embodies these values.
Also moving on to the Lone Star FLL Championship Tournament, will be those teams who won awards in six of the individual elements of the Katy Qualifying Tournament. FIRST, founded by inventor Dean Kamen, was created to inspire young people’s interest and participation in science and technology.
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Edited by
Brooke Neuman
