Feb 1 2011
Eight students aged between 9 and 14 from Lowell Elementary School participated in the FIRST Lego League Regional Robotics Contest at the Irvine Auditorium of the University of Pennsylvania.
FIRST regional robotics contest is a joint venture of the Philadelphia School District's Secondary Robotics Initiative and Penn's School of Engineering and Applied Science. Velda Morris, Expert in Robotics Education, is the co-manager of the event. The contest was participated by 33 teams. In 2002, the National Science Foundation and the federal Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR-UP) funded the launch of the robotics program districtwide.
The regional championship is closely associated with FIRST, a nonprofit organization that encourages students to develop science, technology, engineering and math skills through robotics contests.
In the FIRST middle school contest, children develop small robots from Lego kits and will program their robots to navigate and carry out the desired tasks without their interference. This year’s theme was ‘Body Forward’. After developing the robot, the robots were positioned on an exclusive game table for carrying out simulated tasks like fixing a broken bone and placing a cast within two and a half minutes. The team will get points for every successful task completed by their robot.
The contest also made students to take up a project on a part or function of a body part and they should also provide suggestions for treating medical issues related to that body part. The students need to present their project in the contest.
Source: http://www.lowellschool.org