Middle-School Contestants Take On Real-World Problems With Lego Robots
Joe Muskin with the University of Illinois College of Engineering looks up from an array of Lego Mindstorms components that are used by contestants in the FIRST Illinois Robotics Central State Championship Tounrmanent. Jim Meadows / Illinois Public Media
On Saturday, January 28, 64 teams of kids in fourth through eighth grade will gather on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus and compete in solving practical problems using programmable toy robots.
The event is called a “Lego League” tournament, one of many around the world. It’s being held at the ARC -- the Activities and Recreation Center on Peabody Drive on the U of I campus.
Joe Muskin with the U of I College of Engineering is the tournament coordinator. He says the contestants have been working for months to solve real-life problems using robotic Legos. They’ll demonstrate the effectiveness of their projects during Saturday’s tournament.
The theme for this year’s competition is “Animal Allies,” and each assignment involves working with animals --- scaled down to Lego models.
For instance, in the Milking Automation assignment, Lego models of cows must be brought into a rotating automated milking machine that resembles a carousel (playfully called a “cow-ousel”). The machine and its cows then spins around to produce milk, in little white Lego canisters. But if the machine is spun too far, the cows produce manure, in the form of circular brown Lego bricks.
In addition to their work with the Lego Mindstorms robots, the contestants are also judged on projects that address actual problems involving actual animals that the Lego League teams have researched on their own.
In one example, Muskin says a Lego League team found a chicken farmer who was tired of having to always be on hand twice a day let his chickens in and out of their housing. Muskin says the team’s proposed solution was to set up automatic doors that opened up for the chickens at scheduled times, but also had sensors that responded to microchips embedded on the chickens. That way, the doors would open for birds that showed up a little late.
Muskin says Lego League teams are also judges on how well they work together: both in terms of how the members work together within a team, and how the teams work with each other. The latter is highlighted in the “Alliance Robot competitions”. In this competition, two teams that competed on a certain assignment will be teamed up, with both of them choosing their most efficient components to perform even better than either did alone.
Saturday’s tournament at the University of Illinois campus in Champaign is one of two state-level Lego League tournaments held in Illinois. Muskin says the state tournament was divided into two, because of its size. Contestants have already competed in regional Lego League tournaments around the state. Locally, there are teams from Champaign, Decatur and Bloomington taking part, with names like Curious Fireflies, Robo-Panthers and Aquatic Avengers.
Winners of the two state tournaments will go on to national and international competition. The Lego League competitions are organized by FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), a non-profit organization dedicated to getting young people interested in science and technology. While Saturday’s tournament involved young people in grades 4-8, FIRST also has programs for younger grades and high school students.