The FIRST Lego League national championship was held at ACG Strathallan in South Auckland recently, with twenty teams from around New Zealand competing in the three aspects of FIRST competitions.
The first part of the competition is the ‘Team Project’. Each team identified a problem faced by senior citizens in daily life, and designed a product to help the seniors and aid them with this problem. The students created a presentation on this topic and demonstrated it to a group of judges including AURA team members and other volunteers.
The second aspect of the competition was based on demonstration of the core values of FIRST. These include ideas like enthusiasm, teamwork, and gracious professionalism. Each team participates in a challenge based on co-operation with their teammates while the judges listen and watch, making observations on the way they work. After this they present a poster on how the team integrates the core values into their lives. These components are all marked on a scale from one to five based on how well they completed and presented the task, all weighting toward a final list of three awards.
Finally, the students participate in the robot competition, completing challenges on a 1.2m x 2.5m table and trying to get a higher score than the other competing teams. Awards are given based on the robot performance, mechanical design, programming, and strategy and innovation. AURA team members were involved in interviewing the teams about their design process, filling out mark sheets to later discuss with other volunteers, and choosing who to award the three robot based Lego League trophies to.
The biggest award in the Lego League competition is the Champion’s award. The three teams who receive first, second and third place for this award are those who rank highly in every award category, including exemplary scores in the robot game. Judges debated long and hard with other volunteers on who should receive these prestigious awards, finally awarding third place to team “Antimatter” of ACG Strathallan, second place to the “Springston Strikers” and the first place, overall Champion’s Award, to team “SWAT”, who travelled to Auckland from Christchurch for the event.
The event was very well put together and organised, and we extend our thanks to Jason Kyle and the KiwiFIRST volunteers for their hospitality, and to ACG Strathallan for providing an excellent venue. We look forward to continuing our work with FLL in the future.