Beaufort County’s first LEGO Robotics team recently participated in its first competition and came up one point short from qualifying for the state competition.

The Tech Titans, a team made up of a group of P.S. Jones Middle School students, competed in the FIRST LEGO League Qualifying Tournament with and against 18 other teams on Nov. 22 at the Neal STEM Academy of Engineering and Design in Durham. The team, sponsored by the Beaufort County Police Activities League, Beaufort County Schools, PotashCorp and Lee Chevrolet/Buick of Washington, was a rookie team for a FIRST LEGO League competition and started practicing four months later than most other teams it met in competition, said Dr. Mike McClure, vice president of PAL. This late start was due to the team’s last minute registration acceptance, McClure said. Beaufort County PAL partnered with Beaufort County Schools to implement the STEM-based program in Beaufort County. It focuses on law enforcement teaming up with youth through STEM activities and sports to increase the relationship and understanding between the two and reduce juvenile delinquency and other problems, according to Al Powell, PAL president.

McClure said the LEGO Robotics program tasks the team of students with building a robot out of computerized LEGO kits. The team is headed by Michael Cobb, a PAL volunteer, and Leticia Padilla, a seventh-grade science teacher at P.S. Jones. Padilla’s consummate professional skills as a science teacher were vitally important to the successful rounding up of “a herd of spirited kids” and guiding them in the formation, development and personal ownership of the team, McClure said.

McClure said the students not only have to structurally build a LEGO object that works engineering-wise, but also have to program the “brain” to do something using a computer program. The computer program they use is basic and user-friendly and uses language recognized by the LEGO robot to accomplish specific missions on the table, or game board, McClure said.

Each team starts in the corner of their game board and has to complete 10 different missions, McClure said. A panel of judges grades each team, which has a chance to earn up to 800 points, and they have two and a half minutes to run the board. The judges look for three main components of each team: robot design, which includes simplicity, structural integrity and how the robot performs; project, which illustrates the theme; and FLL core values, which grades social interactions, team sportsmanship, how the team works together and how a team interacts with other teams. The ‘project’ component entails each team coming up with a presentation related to the theme: ‘How do we help people learn better?’ according to McClure.

The Titans performed a skit relating to assistive technology used by first responders, including law enforcement, military and others. The skit was a tribute to PAL, which purchased all the materials and equipment, and relates to Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM), McClure said.

 

“We missed going to the State by one point,” McClure said. “We came that close, but it’s a phenomenal accomplishment for a rookie team. We had approximately half the amount of time than the other teams had. We started from scratch so we had to train them on the job. It was a real enterprise and cooperative venture above measure.

“It unfolded in a well organized morning session of Project judging, a post noon opening ceremony with a parade of teams into the competition auditorium and an audiovisual sensory environment not unlike a combination of a high-charged rock star concert and a closely refereed NFL game. It was an extraordinary and wonderful thing just to experience it.”

McClure added the judges gave the Titans a great pat on the back and provided significant encouragement for the continued development of Beaufort County FLL teams. The Titans’ robot, dubbed Alpha, was judged to be a good basic accomplishment by a rookie team, which had a good strategy focus on a doable subgroup of missions, and the Project was deemed to be a very creative and energetically presented demonstration of the theme response chosen. The FLL Core Values judging disclosed a team characteristic of inspiration with courteous, encouraging, helpful values characterized by inspiration, McClure said.

“They were a little apprehensive until we got there, and then they really got into the swing of things,” McClure said. “They settled right in and really carried themselves professionally and got into what they had been practicing. The kids came away from it just really proud about what they had accomplished.”

McClure said PAL hopes to expand the program to more schools and more teams. In the next year, the goal is to start up at least three more teams, one team for each middle school in the area. So far, the Titans have received congratulatory letters from Rep. Paul Tine and Sen. Bill Cook, McClure said.