Sinclair Community College’s Automation and Control Technology department hosted a regional qualifying event for the FIRST Lego League in Building 12 on Dec. 13. The event hosted 19 teams from area elementary and junior high schools who competed in 12 events using robots assembled from Lego Mindstorms kits and programmed by the students.
According to Jeffrey Donbar, Sinclair’s coordinator for the event, there are 200 FIRST Lego League teams in Ohio.
“Interest in FIRST Lego League has gone up in the past couple of years,” said Donbar. “This year is a 20 to 25 percent increase over last year.”
The four top teams at the competition went on to the state competition to be hosted on Feb. 14 and 15 at the Nutter Center and Wright State University.
The theme of this year’s competition-Climate Connections-focused on encouraging participants to investigate environmental questions. The competition featured a research project to be completed by each team as well as a 12-mission robotics challenge consisting of three rounds.
The students on each team are responsible for conducting all of the research for the project as well as for designing and building the robot for the challenge.
“The competitors are given the tasks [for the competition] not the design,” said Donbar.
The FIRST Lego League is part of the organization For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology founded by Dean Kamen, the inventor of the Segway. According to its web site, Kamen founded FIRST “to inspire young people’s interest and participation in science and technology. FIRST includes the Lego League as well as the FIRST Robotics Competition, FIRST Tech Challenge, and Junior FIRST Lego League as well as a science and technology teaching facility named FIRST Place located in Manchester, NH. More information about FIRST can be found at http://www.usfirst.org/.
