A team of students working on a robotics project at Abbey Park School in Swindon reached the semi-finals of the highly anticipated First Lego League (FLL) Challenge.
The competition was held in Bristol and the team just missed out on a place in the final.
The FLL is a global competition intended to inspire teams of young people to experiment and grow their critical thinking, coding, and design skills through hands-on science and technology learning and robotics.
Abbey Park School's team, who began building their Lego robots in September, have been working on this year’s FLL project centred around the theme of Submerged: An Underwater Robotics Challenge.
The FLL Challenge presents teams with a series of complex missions that require them to design and build robots. The students named their robot "Gilbert" and meticulously programmed it to navigate a challenging underwater-themed course.
Gilbert faced a variety of tasks, including:
- Securing and transporting coral structures
- Releasing a tagged shark back into its habitat
- Guiding an angler fish to its home within a shipwreck
- Raising the mast of a sunken shipwreck
- Retrieving a treasure chest from the shipwreck
- Creating safe habitats for sea creatures
- Releasing a creature attached to an AUV
- Exploring difficult-to-reach waters with a submersible
- Using sonar technology to scan for objects and animals
- Collecting krill to feed a whale
- Adjusting a cargo ship's route to avoid whale migration routes
- Collecting samples and artefacts for scientific analysis
- Docking a ship carrying collected samples
The team had to strategically choose which tasks Gilbert would complete within an allotted two-and-a-half-minute timeframe.
One team member, Dawood from Year 9 said: "We had a really good time at the LEGO League and presenting was really good too, with all the questioning and answering. We even got to the semi-finals!"
Fellow Year 9 Matthew said: "I enjoyed doing what I do best...LEGO."
Another Year 9, Hayden, said: "The club was very fun and so was the competition. It was such a great experience. We had absolutely incredible teamwork."
Hannah Keogh, Science Teacher and Robotics Project Leader, Abbey Park School, said: “It was amazing to reach the semi-finals and the team’s robotic designs were so innovative and creative.
"The First Lego League Challenge emphasises core values such as discovery, teamwork, and, of course, fun. We’ll be building up to take part again next year.”
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