Putting Hanna Elementary FIRST

There are 10 Hanna Elementary students going to Casper on Dec. 6-7 to compete in the Wyoming FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) LEGO League Robotics Competition.

Jason Greenway, Principal for all three northern Carbon County School District No. 2 (CCSD2) Elementary School is overseeing the 11 students that will go to the competition. He said there were 22 students who applied to be in the program, but the competition is limited to 10. The extra will be an alternate in case one student cannot go.

What does all this entail?

There is a mat that currently has topography printed on it and the students will create their robots and buildings on it.

The mat is visually appealing to enhance the theme of the competition. Each year the theme is different.

This year it is City Shaper.

The students said the buildings created from scratch have to conform to accessibility, such as putting in elevators, ramps and traffic flow, and make sure the design can be lasting in the face of earthquakes or other natural disasters.

The students said their skyscrapers are made with steel because the building will be sustainable during an earthquake.

Before creating the building, the students must first construct a robot that will make the building.

All materials come at the beginning of the competition season. FIRST LEGO League sends official materials to each registered team, consisting of a challenge mat, LEGO electronic and mechanical components, and instructions for building the items for the mat. The teams also receive a list of tasks, called missions, to complete involving each model on the mat.

Greenway had the students run a mission.

At first there was a problem with getting the created robot to respond to the instructions from the tablet that one student programmed. Greenway watched as the students did some troubleshooting and solved the glitch.

The robotics part of the competition involves designing and programming LEGO Mindstorms robots to complete tasks. The students work out an answer to a problem related to the theme. At the completion in Casper, the CCSD2 students will share their knowledge, compare ideas and display their robots with kids from other teams in Wyoming.

Greenway said there are about 60 teams coming from all over the state, two of them from Rawlins, to compete. Hanna Elementary is the only team from CCSD2.

FIRST LEGO League gives teams total freedom on how to finish the missions, providing they are completed by a programmed LEGO Mindstorms robot with no outside assistance. The robot has two and a half minutes to complete the missions called the Robot Game.

Each team has a period of eight weeks to analyze the challenge mat, design and build a LEGO Mindstorms robot, and program it to fulfill the given missions in any manner they see working. The robot must be autonomous, and may contain only one LEGO Mindstorms programmable block and no more than 4 motors.

Greenway said the students have put in many hours to get to this point.

In addition to the robot, the competition has three additional judged sections with the purpose of providing teams with feedback on their achievement of the FIRST LEGO League learning objectives.

The first judging session, Core Values, is designed to determine how the team works together and uses the FIRST LEGO League Core Values in everything they do.

The core values are discovery, innovation, impact, inclusion, teamwork and fun.

In addition to discussing how their team exhibits these values, teams are also asked to perform a teamwork activity, usually timed, to see how the team works together to solve a new problem.

The students said team work was extremely important to winning the completion.

The second judging session is the robot design where the team demonstrates the mechanical design, programmin and innovation of their robot. The goal of this judging session is to see what the robot should do during the Robot Game.

In the third judging session, the students must give a five minute presentation on research of a topic related to the current challenge. The required steps of the project as teams is to first identify a problem that is related to that years theme, then create a solution to their problem by modifying something that already exists or creating something new, and then the team must share that solution.

When the competition comes together, each team brings their robot to compete on an official challenge mat identical to their own. Two members of the team are allowed at the board during a match; however, they can switch out if needed. In the case of a serious problem, such as the entire robot breaking down, the entire team is allowed at the board for as long as the problem exists.

The robot starts in an area marked as base, a white area in the corner or to one side of the table. In base, two team members are allowed to touch the robot and start programs. If the team touches the robot while it is outside of base, the referee will issue a penalty, resulting in a five point deduction. The robot is not required to return to base.

The FIRST LEGO League Robotics Competition has remarkable and gifted kids participating as the Hanna Elementary students have been proving over the past eight weeks.