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Community Corner

Livingston Wins World Championship at FIRST Robotics

A group of six 10th graders from Landroids #4220 of Livingston Robotics Club won the #1 Inspire Award at the 2012 FIRST Tech Challenge World Championship held in St. Louis, MO on April 28.

Livingston's hometown robotics team has once again put the town on the map by winning the World Championship of FIRST robotics.

The group of six 10th graders from Landroids #4220 of Livingston Robotics Club won the #1 Inspire Award at the 2012 FIRST Tech Challenge World Championship held in St. Louis, MO on April 28. The Inspire Award is the highest honor in FTC given to a team that truly embodied the challenge of the FTC program, best represented as a role model, a top contender for all judging categories and is a strong competitor on the field. The Inspire Award Winner is an inspiration to other teams, acting with Gracious ProfessionalismTM both on and off the playing field.

The Landroids also won the Finalist Alliance Captain, the Franklin Division Winning Alliance Captain, and was the only undefeated team throughout the qualifying rounds amongst 128 teams from 13 countries.

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From April 25 to April 28, 2012, 30,000 participants, fans, families, educators, celebrities and industry leaders gathered to celebrate students’ engineering and robotics prowess at the annual FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Championship, held in St. Louis at the Edward Jones Dome. More than 640 teams from 32 countries participated in all 4 FIRST levels of competitions during the World Championship (Junior FIRST LEGO League, FIRST LEGO League, FIRST Tech Challenge, and FIRST Robotics Competition).

FIRST Tech Challenge was the level in which team Landroids competed. Each year, a different game challenge is announced in September. For the 2011-12 “Bowled Over” season, teams from around the world would design and build a robot using a given kit plus other permitted parts. The robot will be operated in both autonomous and tele-operated modes within 2.5 minutes, while pairing up with different alliances and opponents. The robot has to be robust enough to push a bowling ball, yet sophisticated enough to pick out the magnetic balls, place the regular racquetballs into crates, and then stack and/or lift the crates as high as possible to score points.

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More than two thousand FTC teams from different countries compete through multiple regional qualifiers and local championships. Through complex advancement criteria and award system, only 128 teams would earn an invitation to the St. Louis World Championship in April. Since each region or State only allows two invitations to the world, NJ is among the states with the strongest teams, achieved the unprecedented 7 invites by winning in other surrounding regions, such as NYC, NY state, DE, and PA. Landroids had to put all efforts to win the NJ State Inspire Award during the qualification, and that set up

a strong foundation for this team to achieve the Inspire Award at the World Championship.

While majority of teams tried to design only a lifter to raise crates as high as possible to earn the most points, Landroids was the only team that addressed all aspects of the challenges with a robot that is a consistent performer, versatile to complete all tasks. Equipped with vision, magnetometer, gyro, accelerometer and many other sensors to give a full range of sensor detections and feedback through the multiple arduinos, the Landroids robot redefined what is possible with FTC class robots.

The Landroids robot has a solid 90” scissor arm, which is able to lift 3 crates at once, but the lifter was only half of the height compared to many other high lifters at the tournament. However, Landroids’ scissor lift was well designed to withstand the rigorous competition, while many other high lifters experienced catastrophic breakdown or toppled over. The Landroids robot also equipped with a holonomic/tank hybrid drive enables the robot to play offense and defense maneuvers successfully, and adapt to strategy changes on the fly to be a true contender on the field.

This is Landroids’ 2nd season participating in FTC. Last year at the World Championship, Landroids took home the Rockwell Collins Innovate Award for the robot design. Previous to competing in the high school level, Landroids have won multiple 1st place awards at the national and international level in the science and robotics arena.

Besides building robots, Landroids also served as the student STEM ambassador of FIRST, Google and X PRIZE, actively hosting various robotics exhibitions at Liberty Science Center. Two of the Landroids members are part of the Barnabas Medical Center Robotics Surgery internship program under Dr. Michael LaSalle, three members are the recipient of the 2012 US Army REAP (Research and Engineering Apprentice Program) internships, and all six members will be interning once again at New Jersey Institute of Technology this summer at the Biomedical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science departments.

Landroids is now planning for their next major exhibition, the 3rd annual Livingston Robotics Club Jr.FLL Expo. The event will be held at the Oval in Livingston during the Livingston Youth Appreciation Week on May 26, 2012. There will be a demonstration of Landroids' World Champion robot alongside many exciting science and robotics exhibitions and enrichment activities for children of all ages.

The team is currently designing a law enforcement reaction time training device for a Florida sponsor. This project will continue into the summer to keep this inquisitive and high performing team busy.

For more information about the team, please visit its Facebook or website at www.landroids.org

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