A group of St. Albert-area students are flying high this week after placing well at the First Lego League robotics competition at NAIT on Saturday.
The home-schooled students took one first place award and two second-place spots.
There were two aspects to the competition: a science-based project and a robot competition. For the project portion, the local team came up with the concept of a motorized life jacket that could propel a person through the water.
Their idea was to attach an Archimedes Screw — an auger-like device — to each arm to act as a propulsion system. This effort won first place of all the projects.
“I could tell that the judges were impressed but I never thought they’d actually give us first place,” said team member Josh Vilcsak, 13.
“We were a little surprised we won, actually,” agreed Matthew Lambregts, 13.
The other team members are Tyler Breau, 14, Ben Carpenter, 11, Dean Webb, 11. Webb lives in Parkland County the others live in the St. Albert area.
The second part of the competition was a robot obstacle course. Each team spent months designing and programming robots using a kit supplied by Lego. The robot must perform specific tasks, such as knocking over objects or gathering them up and carrying them back to the home base.
This part was extremely time-consuming and frustrating, the boys said, as the robots tend to have a mind of their own and can’t be trusted to do the same thing twice.
During the competition, each team had three tries to get their robot to complete a specific task within two minutes and 30 seconds. There were a lot of “oohs” in the crowd when their robot successfully crossed a particularly difficult obstacle by plunking down a pre-made bridge and driving right over.
The team earned second place for the performance of their robot and also earned second place overall based on its project, teamwork, technical design and programming.
“We were just over the moon. I still think they’re in shock,” said parent Delfina Lambregts.
It was the first year of competition for all the boys. Some of the other teams have been doing it for four years.
The group came together through the home schooling centre with which they are registered. They met once a week for about three months to complete their project and their robot.
The competition has been around for about 10 or 12 years, said tournament director Vin Stocking.
Each September a new challenge is released. This year the project portion involved researching a scientific problem and presenting a solution in the area of alternative modes of transportation.
The robot challenges are released at the same time. The teams get a mat to practice on and a robot kit. They can also add any extra Lego pieces they want.
“We’re trying to get kids jazzed up about science and technology … have a lot of fun and learn a lot of things at the same time,” Stocking said.
“This is not playing with Lego. This is engineering.”
