Winners of the FIRST LEGO League Challenge Robot Design Award

Winners of the FIRST LEGO League (FLL) Challenge Robot Design Award

On 5th March, Year 9 TWGSB Robotics Team (Austin L, Cruz O, Ishaan M, Liam S, Srikruth C) celebrated winning the FIRST LEGO League (FLL) Challenge Robot Design Award. In addition to the robot performance, this also involved a presentation to a panel of judges about the robot design and answering questions from the judges demonstrating their technical understanding.

FIRST LEGO League introduces science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) to children through fun, exciting hands-on learning. The participants gain real-world problem-solving experiences through a guided, global robotics programme. FLL’s three divisions inspire students to experiment and grow their critical thinking, coding and design skills. Friendly competition is at the heart of the challenge where teams engage in research, problem-solving, coding and engineering – building as well as programming a LEGO robot that navigates the missions of a robot game. As part of the challenge, teams also participate in a research project to identify and solve a relevant real-world problem.

The teams prepare all season to compete at tournaments, where judges provide valuable feedback on their robot, code and Innovation Project. The final test of their work comes at the Robot Game table, where they race against the clock for a personal best score and the chance to advance to a local championship. 

Our students competed with teams who were much bigger (ten+ team members each and one or two technical mentors) and who have been participating for years, so they did very well.  

Ishaan M (Year 9) tells us more:

‘The mission of the tournament was to build an autonomous robot to perform set tasks and challenges. The team built a robot consisting of motors, sensors and other various attachments; this was then programmed to run on a block coding software. We won an award for the most innovative and multi-functional robot design as well as individual medals. Team TWGSB as a first-year team were able to successfully complete the tasks as planned and compete head-to-head with other seasoned competitors. Overall, we thoroughly enjoyed building the robot as well as the experience of the competition day.  During our journey, we picked up very valuable skills such as teamwork, coding and problem-solving skills. I hope more students will be encouraged to participate in the coming years.’