Feb 3 2011
11 teams from Anderson area participated in the third annual regional qualifying contest for the FIRST Lego League robotics championship, which was held at Tri-County Technical College.
The theme for this year is ‘Body Forward’. Students were made to investigate treatment options for several biomedical issues associated with diseases like asthma, leukemia and muscular dystrophy.
Stephanie Evans, Coordinator of FIRST Lego League regional contest, has stated that FIRST robotics contest has been made as a lively event and it is yet another method of exposing students to science and engineering.
Judging criteria for Lego League contests include performance of the robot, teamwork, design of the robot and research project. Every team should take up two challenges. First half of the contest includes developing automated robots by the teams using the Lego Mindstorms kit. These robots will be included on a playing arena and they should participate in matches of duration 2.5 minutes. In the second half, all teams will present a novel solution for treating a real biomedical issue.
Lakeside Middle School’s ‘the Aliens’ bagged the first prize. The teams who came second and third were Edwards Middle’s ‘RoboPanthers II’ and Tamassee-Salem Middle School’s ‘Tamassee Robotics’ respectively. The winning teams along with ‘the Life Savers’ of Ravenel Elementary and ‘the Bacon team’ of Dacusville Middle School will participate in the state level contests, which is scheduled to be held on March 5 at the North Charleston Performing Arts Center.
The event was funded by the Robert Bosch organization and was hosted by the Tri-County Tech industrial and engineering technology department.
Source: http://www.usfirst.org