First-time team wins Lego League title

A four-member team making its first start in First Lego League competition won the Missouri state title last month. That earned them a place at national FLL meet at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.

The four members of the Children of the Square Table team knew each other from their west St. Louis County neighborhood. But, all attend different schools.

The members are Brian Roth, Ian Pittwood, Vineeth Bhuvanagiri and Linsey Button.

Brian is a 5th grader at Truman Elementary School. Ian is a 4th grader at Ridge Meadows. Vineeth is a 6th grader at LaSalle Springs Elementary. And Linsey is a 6th grader at Selvidge Elementary.

Ten-year-old Brian said he's worked with Legos since he was 4 or 5 and has "tons of Lego pieces." But, his interest in programming the "brain" of Lego robots was sharpened last summer at a camp on St. Louis Community College's Meramec campus.

After the camp, he told his parents he wanted to participate in First Lego League competition. But, his school didn't have an advisor and he didn't even have any teammates.

It turned out school sponsorship wasn't a must. And he only needed three other kids to make up a team. He and his friends held their first planning meeting last September.

That gave them only three months to build the robot, program its RCX brain and teach it to run a complicated obstacle course.

Everything turned out just fine as the Square Table team won the Director's Award at the state FLL tournament early in December. They competed against 27 other teams.

During each of the three rounds of the competition, the robot was handled by two team members. Brian and Ian ran the first round. Vineeth and Linsey handled the second and Brian and Linsey did the third round.

By winning, they got an automatic bid to the national meet in Atlanta on April 27-29.

Brian said the path to the state championship wasn't always a smooth one.

Because none of the team members had much Lego robot experience, he said the first brain programming efforts were "pathetic."

Even at the state meet, the team got caught trying to make late repairs. "We had it apart and had to just jam it back together just before the contest," Brian said.

Nine-year-old Ian Pittwood said the team never did get the robot's gears to operate correctly. The machine tended to "drift" on some legs of the obstacle course.

Like Brian, Ian said his basement "was flooded with Lego pieces" but he had no robot experience. He said his biggest Lego project was building a "big Ferrari car about a foot long and six inches high."

Twelve-year-old Vineeth Bhuvanagiri said he has built about 20 Lego kits. "But, I just made each kit and I've got them on display in my room. I didn't play with Lego pieces," he said.

He added he'd done some programming at the Rockwood Center for Creative Learning.

He said he's also taken apart broken computers and printers "to see what was inside."

Eleven-year-old Linsey Button said her only experience with building things was "making castles out of Styrofoam."

She said her work on the robot was her first effort at programming. "But, I'm interested in doing more," she said.

Linsey said she's used to working with computers, mostly playing games. She said her favorite game website is www.addictinggames.com. Her favorites are Bubble Trouble and Water Slides.

Brian's dad, Matt, helped build a competition table in the Roth's basement. That way the kids could try out their robot on the same course they'd have at the state meet.

Right after the state tournament victory, the team was back at work on its robot. They want to make improvements before the national tournament.

The first order of business was to find out why the robot "drifted" and strayed off course. They are checking the programming, the light sensors, the gears and the track treads.

The Square Table team also is looking forward to entering the FLL competition again next year. All members still will be eligible in the 9-to-14-age classification.

Brian said the team members picked up "some pretty good design ideas" from teams in this year's tournament.