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A newly formed Moretown Elementary School robotics team took third place in a state-wide competition over the weekend, competing against 39 teams that included private schools, public schools, STEM schools and other academies.
The Moretown Lego Robotics team is The Valley’s first-ever Lego-Robotics team and its members placed in the top three in a regional competition which landed them in the state finals this weekend where they took third on January 18 in competition at Global Foundries.
The team was formed with the help of faculty members including fifth and six grade teacher Mish Boreanaz Jason Stevenson, school counselor. Stevenson had been using Legos in his work with kids and the idea of Lego Robotics was birthed from there.
SIMILAR CONCEPTS
Student competitors were tasked with designing Lego robots that performed specific tasks and also had to create an oral presentation about potential robotics solutions to modern day challenges, focusing on the theme of oceans and waterways. The team prepared a presentation on the impact of ocean microplastics, and how robots could be used to clean up waterways, designing a robotic whale which used similar concepts baleen plates to filter plastics while not harming wildlife, parent Erik Yunghans explained.
With the support of school administrators, club members were provided with the Lego Robotics equipment that allowed them to write the code that runs the robots. They had a set of missions that they had to perform live in front of judges over the weekend and received scores based on what they accomplished. For the Moretown team, one of their missions was to raise the mast of a ship with their robot.
NEXT YEAR!
Additionally, the team needed to demonstrate that they had the chops to program their robot to move five paces forward, then left, then up and down and back to the original location – something they accomplished with the Lego Spike Prime platform.
“One of the intriguing things, for the entire event, is having kids perform these challenges and do a project as a team, is having them talk about how robotics could potentially help the world, so children at Moretown read a book about micro plastics on Alaskan shorelines and that book was an inspiration for the team to create a robot to potentially clean the ocean,” Yunghans said.
For the local kids to have advanced to the next level of competition they would have had to place first or second.
“But the exciting part is that they can participate next year,” Yunghans said.
