at the start of the school year. They
love finding information on a variety
of topics and organizing their projects into PowerPoint slides for their
presentations. The seventh graders
help the younger students, as they
remember what it was like to be new
but now know what they need to do
to be successful on the team and at the
competitions.
Most of these kids played with
Legos when they were younger and
are interested in science, technology,
engineering, and math (STEM), so
being able to work with robots is a
perfect stepping stone to their dreams
of becoming engineers or scientists.
The FLL experience also provides
an opportunity for students to work
alongside several local engineer mentors in our lab each week. Today, Cindy Chung, who is a mentor engineer
from Xerox, meets individually with
the Lawngnomes, Robotic Hotdogs,
Explosive Legos, and Jelly Bellies to
see how each team is progressing on
the research portion of its project.
with several years of FLL experience,
they easily make the transition to the
FRC team, and when they head off to
college, they leave with seven years of
robotics experience.
The Chaminade FLL program has
grown over the past eight years and
now serves 40 students in grades 6–8.
There are no admission requirements
for the team, but all participants and
coaches have to make a commitment
to attend work sessions two afternoons
each week as well as a few tournaments throughout the year.
The Teams
Teams consist of 10 students, each of
whom chooses the role of engineer,
programmer, or researcher. Everyone
helps out where needed, but these
subteams specialize in one aspect of
the competition for the season and
lead the team in that portion.
Traditionally, the eighth grade
students lead and oversee all the
builders, programmers, and research
team members. The new sixth grade
students are eager to contribute to
the team using the laptops issued
The Challenge
FIRST issues a different challenge
each year to each of its programs. The
FLL students have to tackle a two-part
challenge: researching a current issue
and solving the issue with a robotic
solution.
In 2010, the FLL challenge was
called “Body Forward: Engineering Meets Medicine” (http://tinyurl.
com/7ud5mqf). The teams were challenged to design, build, and program
an autonomous robot using a Lego
Mindstorms NXT kit, with a goal
of scoring as many points as possible
in the 2.5-minute matches that they
play on the themed playing field.
Some of the tasks they program their
robots to do include:
• Setting a broken bone and applying
scaffolding, which will allow a bone
to grow back together when the normal healing process is not working
