After months of practice and preparation, the CoeBotics team of Coe Elementary School hosted a practice tournament Nov. 20 in which 25 teams from the greater Seattle area demonstrated and tested their robot skills.
Participating teams included Little Cedars Elementary, LegoInitiates from Catharine Blaine K-8 and 2TEN from Oakview Elementary School. The festival was held in the Coe Elementary gym.
Ballard High School Vikings Robotics and an all-girls team, the Heat Misers, demonstrated their FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) robots - built from scratch - whereas the teams participating in the festival built robots for the FIRST Lego League (FLL) -using Lego and metal materials. Students in grades up to middle school participate in the FLL and middle schoolers and high schoolers participate in the FTC, according to Willem Scholten, founder of CoeBotics.
Even the Port of Seattle police came to show support by bringing their own robot from the bomb unit. One of the officers described it as a "hazardous bombs device, used to deactivate bombs."
Kevin Reed, a volunteer for the Washington division of FIRST organization, said the teams must build robots that are "completely autonomous and they must have everything set. They have to run the robot with the push of a button."
That push of a button releases the robot from a square white base in the corner of the board, to complete as many of the tasks as possible for a total of up to 400 points.
Scholten said the tasks on the board to be completed by the robots all relate to the theme of this year's challenge, "The Human Body." On the board, several different problems of the body are set for the robot to "fix." The teams can fix a broken bone; transport red and white blood cells made out of Lego into a section of the board labeled "patient area"; and bring Lego-made eyes to the upper body on the board, to name a few.
According to Scholten, for the junior FLL teams, the Robotics Festival was their finals. There were no winners or losers, and all of the kids went home with medals. The older FLL teams all left with certificates in hand. The team "10 Legos in a Bucket" won the practice competition with its highest score at 190 out of the possible 400.
Mirabelle Scholten of CoeBotics said confidently that she felt more prepared for the Dec. 4 competition, where teams from all over Washington will compete in various cities -CoeBotics will be competing in Bellevue. She exclaimed, "Yeah! It's going to be way more crowded and have way more people!" For more information on CoeBotics, visit www.theroboticist.org. For information on the Washington state chapter of FIRST, visit www.firstwa.org.[[In-content Ad]]
