ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md. (January 20, 2017) -- Team Aberdeen Proving Ground, or APG, hosted its sixth annual For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, or FIRST, Lego League, or FLL, Qualifier at the U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Command, or ATEC, Jan. 21.
FLL is a robotics program for students in grades four to eight, designed to get children excited about science, technology and engineering, along with teaching them valuable employment and life skills.
According to the FIRST website, FLL provides a positive impact on the participants noting that after taking part in a Lego League challenge, over 87 percent of the students were more interested in doing well in school and 88 percent had more interest in attending college.
This year, 17 teams participated in the qualifier at ATEC. Of those 17, four teams will advance to the Maryland State Championship at the University of Maryland, Baltimore College, or UMBC, on Feb. 25.
Maj. Gen. John W. Charlton, ATEC commander, kicked off the event by welcoming the students and encouraging them to have fun throughout the day.
"It's programs like FLL that are intended to show students that not only are science, technology, engineering, and mathematics interesting and important in our lives, but they can also be a lot of fun too," Charlton said.
Each year, FLL releases a challenge based on a real world scientific topic. Each challenge within the competition revolves around the same theme. This year's theme challenge is called Animal Allies and its purpose is to make our interactions with animals better.
The day-long event consisted of a morning and afternoon session. During the morning session, students presented their projects, where they had identified a solution to a problem they wanted to solve.
Joelie Garcia and her teammates from team "Gizmo Girls", found a problem with the way goats eat. During their studies, they noticed goats fighting when trying to feed. As a solution, the team came up with a way to prevent the fighting, while still allowing goats to get their own food.
The afternoon session was the Robot Match. During the match the students programed their autonomous robot to score points on a themed playing field for 2.5 minutes.
Richard Blorstad, a Maryland FLL Referee, said there are 15 different missions on the table the teams can achieve.
"Teams can either go for the higher point missions, which are more challenging, or missions with fewer points but are easier to achieve," Blorstad said.
Both sessions were judged by volunteers from Team APG and UMBC on each team's project, their robots and how well each team used the FLL core values.
The team's core values were judged on their inspiration, teamwork and gracious professionalism.
Garcia said her favorite thing about FLL is that it has a variety of different aspects to it. "There's the team work, the project, and the actual robotics."
"Because I am a hands-on type of person, I'd love to do something that involves science, technology, engineering, and mathematics when I grow up," Garcia said.
Charlton concluded the event by asking the students questions to see if they could guess the types of animals found on APG. To no one's surprise, the students guessed them all.
Congratulations to teams Pixel Brix, Black Rocket Snakerodiles, Imagination, and Crazy Creative Lego Girls for advancing to the Maryland State Championships!
FIRST has many competitions to include the Junior FIRST Lego League, FLL, the FIRST Tech Challenge and the FIRST Robotics. To learn more about the FIRST program and the competitions, visit http://www.firstinspires.org/.
AWARDS:
Champions Award - Pixel Brix
1st Place Robot Performance Award - Pixel Brix
1st Place Project Award - Gizmo Girls
1st Place Core Values Award- Rescue Squirrels
1st Place Robot Design Award - Imagination
1st Place Judges Award - Mindstorm Madness
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