Over the weekend, schoolkids from all over Virginia and D.C. met in Harrisonburg to battle it out -- in a robotics competition. WMRA's Randi B. Hagi reports.
ANNOUNCER: Timekeeper -- ready, on my mark. Three! Two! One! LEGO! [crowd noise]
At the Harrisonburg High School gym on Saturday, elementary school students ran around tables, pressing buttons on the top of the LEGO robots they built to execute lines of code that they programmed. That ordered the robots to navigate around the table, or move a group of blocks to a certain spot, or open a hatch and catch the blocks that fell out. This is the Robot Game -- a part of the regional championship of the Virginia-D.C. chapter of FIRST LEGO League. FIRST is an acronym -- For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.
KAITLIN ILNITZKI: Every year there's a new theme related to some kind of real world issue … this year, the teams are looking at issues related to cargo and transportation of that cargo.
Kaitlin Ilnitzki is the league's assistant director.
[announcer ambi]
ILNITZKI: So this robot's got sensors on it, and it's actually following the line. So they've written code where it can detect the white and black line and be able to smoothly navigate around and move different things.
ANNOUNCER: Making their way down -- and they got the helicopter delivery. Very nicely done.
The league's season starts each August, when that year's challenge is issued.
ILNITZKI: The team works together to develop a mission strategy of how they want to tackle the robot game. They build a robot, they code the robot, and then they just go into that design process where they're iterating, they're testing new things out … they're adding new attachments, they're trying to make the robot as consistent as possible.
I met up with a team from Marshall Elementary School in Manassas called the Eagle Bots as they were practicing for their next round. Betsy Woodard explained some of the maneuvers they had programmed the robot to perform.
[robot noises]
BETSY WOODARD: So my mission, and sometimes Ryan's mission, over there, sometimes he'll flick that thing up, but other times it won't work. I'm actually doing three missions: I'm doing that mission that pushes that, that mission that drops that package, and then I'm repairing the bridge.
Ryan Lui and Sebastian Feser walked me through the robot's design.
RYAN LUI: It has three motors, two wheel motors, and one medium motor for the attachments that need to move. We also have two sensors, the color sensor and the touch sensor. This is our brick. We used this design because there's a lot of space for attachments, and like on the back, the sides, and then the front …
SEBASTIAN FESER: We also really like it because it's compact so it can fit through some of the smaller gaps without different parts -- without different parts of the missions catching against the wheels or attachments …
Another part of the program is an innovation project, where the kids try to solve real-world issues -- such as supply chain problems -- and then discuss their ideas with industry professionals.
ILNITZKI: Once they've come up with an idea, they reach out to local leaders. We had several teams talk with people at Newport News Shipbuilding, at Amazon, at Norfolk Southern … those experts gave them feedback on it that they used to, again, get back into that design process, try to make their idea even stronger.
This year’s competition looked different than those of previous years. Pre-pandemic, they would have had over a hundred teams competing, and the bleachers packed with cheering families. This year, their first championship held in person since the pandemic began, they had just 72 teams, and limited spectators. But the atmosphere was still jovial this weekend, with organizers and participants dressing up in everything from pink tutus to homemade wizard hats.
Ilnitzki said one of the goals of the league is to foster kids' interest in STEM, especially for those from demographics that are underrepresented in those fields.
ILNITZKI: I heard from a team in Abingdon, one of the young ladies talking about, ‘I never knew how to code, and I really never knew that there were a lot of girl coders out there. I always saw guys doing it in movies. So now I know how to code, and I actually solved our first mission this season for our team!’ So she was excited about that.
During lunch on Saturday, I was talking with the Eagle Bots when they got some news.
OFFICIAL: Hey guys, your score is in. There's a new number one on the board. Three hundred and sixty points -- to the Eagle Bots. [kids screaming, clapping]
The judges are meeting on Monday for deliberations, and the weekend's winners will be announced in a livestream on Tuesday night.
