A six-member team of west St. Louis County middle-schoolers
last month won the top prize in the Missouri State First
Lego League tournament. Now, the kids are busy making improvements
on their entry for FLL World Festival in April.
The winning "Oddly Charged Particles" team includes five
boys and one girl. The kids range in age from 11 to 14 and
live in the cities of Ballwin, Ellisville and Wildwood.
Oddly
Charged Particles Team
Winning the Champion's Award marked the second time in
three years the kids have won top spot in the state FLL
meet. They won two years ago under the team name of "Squared
Table."
Linsey
Button |
Thirteen-year-old Linsey Button is an 8th grader at Selvidge
Middle School. She acknowledges the team did "pretty well
in state" but "we have a lot of work to do to prepare for
the national tournament."
Winning teams at state can continue to make improvements
to their robot entries right up to the world festival. That
tournament will be held in at Atlanta April 17-19.
Besides Linsey, other members of the "Oddly Charged" team
are:
Vineeth Bhuvanagiri, 14, of Wildwood; twins Chris and Ryan
Novatny, 11, of Ellisville; Ian Pittwood, 11, of Ballwin,
and Brian Roth, 12, of Ballwin.
The entry in the state meet required lots of work since
the competition involves more than just building and programming
a robot.
This year, entrants worked on a theme of allocation of
world energy resources. The kids had to build and program
a robot that could perform various energy-related jobs.
The robot's run has to be done without any operator intervention.
But, each team's entry also included a written "energy
audit" of a public building. The kids checked on energy
use in the building and then present a report on changes
that could cut down on energy usage.
Vineeth
Bhuvanagiri |
The "Oddly Charged" team picked the Selvidge Middle School
building, where four of the six members attend school.
Fourteen-year-old Vineeth did special work on that report.
The whole team collected energy-use data about the building.
Then, Vineeth created an Excel spread sheet to let officials
predict whether suggested conservation changes would be
cost-effective.
Vineeth said, "I like to work with computers." He said
he got help from an official of an architectural firm that
specializes in "green" or energy-efficient construction.
Chris
Novatny |
The kids presented their report to the Rockwood School
District's facilities committee. The kids all shared in
building and programming the robot. The machine is built
of Lego pieces and powered by an on-board computer. At each
planning meeting, kids passed around different assignments
so each would know all phases of the overall project.
Chris Novatny is a 6th grader at Selvidge Middle. He said
his favorite part of the project was in actually building
the robot. "I like to make sure the robot has all the right
features on it so the computer program can work."
Ryan
Novatny |
For instance, their robot had to be able to lift oil barrels,
move model "wave tide" windmills and empty fuel trucks.
His twin, Ryan, said he liked programming the robot's computer
"brain." But, he said his favorite part of the FLL project
was "going to the tournament competition and being with
all my friends."
Eleven-year-old Ian Pittwood of Ballwin said there'll probably
be more to do before the world festival besides improving
the robot's operations. "We'll probably do some fund-raising.
Last time, we raffled off some Cardinal tickets to help
pay for the trip," he said.
Ian
Pittwood |
He said the people who bought the tickets got a good deal.
"The Cardinals won the game they went to," he said.
About needed improvements, Ian said the biggest problem
involved the robot's inability to unload the fuel truck.
But, he added, "It's fixable."
Twelve-year-old Brian Roth lives in Ballwin but is an 8th
grader at Sperreng Middle School in the Lindbergh School
District.
He said the idea for setting up the FLL team came when
he attended a robotics class during a "summer college for
kids." He said, "Our teacher told us about the Lego League
competition."
Brian
Roth |
He and his mother called friends and first set up the four-member
Squared Table team. That led to the first state meet victory
two years ago. This year, the team added members to increase
membership to six.
Team members with eligibility left plan to have another
team next year. But, they'll have to recruit some new members
because Vineeth and Linsey will be too old to continue.
