The RoboRoos’ junior team was victorious once again in the FIRST Lego League competition, taking out top honours by winning the Champion’s Award at the SA regional tournament and then the Programming Award at the nationals held in Sydney.
Winning the FLL Champion’s Award was a first for the RoboRoos and was as a result of two months of hard work, long hours and countless testings. “We are so proud of our achievements. We worked so hard and couldn’t have done it without our supporters, mentors and of course, our parents.” said an excited team member.
FIRST Lego League (FLL) is an international competition for students aged between 9 and 16 which focuses on real-world topics relating to the sciences. The competition is held annually with a new challenge announced each year that revolves around a particular theme. Teams of up to 10 students have about 8 weeks to design, build and program Lego Robots to complete set tasks. They also have to research a topic and come up with innovative, original solutions. The teams then meet at regional tournaments where they are judged on the performance of their robots, the solution they created and how well they work together. It also gives them an opportunity to share their knowledge, compare ideas, and display their robots.
The theme for the FLL challenge was Nature’s Fury. Teams were required to pick a natural disaster, research it, find a problem and come up with ways to solve it. The RoboRoos chose to focus on bushfires in light of the recent NSW bushfires which destroyed a large area of the Blue Mountains and surrounding towns. In search for more information and a creative solution, the team set off to the Country Fire Service (CFS) in Strathalbyn where they learnt about the many different aspects of being a fire-fighter and the problems they faced on the frontline. It became apparent that the inability to survey the fire zone was a huge problem for fire-fighters. The solution they came up with was a device they named FRED, the First Response Emergency Drone, an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) capable of providing real time aerial video and thermal images along with providing real time environmental data back to the ground crews. The unique feature about FRED is its ability to map out a fire-front using live data whilst surveying an area.
Following their big win at the regional, the RoboRoos set off to Sydney to compete with the country’s best. With not much time between tournaments, the team was pushed to make as many improvements as possible. The team’s efforts were rewarded when they received their first ‘Programming Award’, an award given to the team with the best programming performance during the period of the competition. Their robot also scored in the top five.
RoboRoos is South Australia’s only community base team with around 25 members aged between 9 and 17 years. Only its junior members (14 years or under) compete in the FLL championships whilst those over 14 years compete in the FIRST Robots Challenge (FRC) championships.
The Robo Roos’ success in the FLL (and FRC) Championships would not have been possible without the continued generous support from Don Alan.
What a great article !!!!!!