Teens Build the Best Robots ... In the World!

Livingston teens showed their scientific prowess in world competition in Saint Louis, bringing home major awards for robot design.

The Livingston High School Lance Robotics was awarded the highly coveted PTC Design Award for creating the most functional and aesthetic robot.

Landroids received the Rockwell Collins Innovate Award for their ingenious design of their robot.

“To be selected as the best of all the best teams from through the world is amazing!” said Connor King, captain of the Lancer Robotics team.

The four-day FTC World Championship in St. Louis on April 27-30 challenged the teens in technical skills such as utilizing computer-aided design, building and programming a robot that can work in autonomous and remote-control modes to handle obstacles and score points.

It also required teens to utilize many soft skills such as documenting the engineering process, performing community outreach, exhibiting teamwork and team spirit, and cooperating in alliances for robot performance on the field.

In addition to good design, the LHS team was awarded by how they incorporated industrial design concepts into the design of their robot and by how well they were infused creative solutions into a clean and practical design.  In winning the award, the judges also considered the advanced level of Computer Aided Design CAD drawings completed by the students.

Lauren Atkins, a senior on the team described winning the award as validation of all the things students learned throughout the year.  “We were really focused on designing and building a robot that would perform consistently and score in the most practical and efficient manner,” Atkins said.

“Making it to the Championship requires a considerable amount of time and effort on the part of the students and coaches," said  Jim Novotny, 6-12 Technology Supervisor for Livingston Public Schools, and assistant coach of the team.

"To make it in back to back years truly shows the level of dedication by everyone involved with the team,” he said.

“This year,” said Dave Richards, LHS Technology Education teacher and coach of the team, “we introduced a new curriculum and software at the high school which the team used to guide them through the design process. The team has been following the industrial design process throughout the year and did an outstanding job applying the concepts discussed in class.  The PTC Design Award is truly a deserved award for this team.”

The Landroids, in addition to winning the  Rockwell Collins Innovate Award for  ingenious design, was also nominated for the Think Award for their Engineering Notebook documentary. The judges said they were impressed with team’s inventive and complexity use of materials and technology of the robot design to achieve the ultimate game challenge, which was to actively detect the magnet batons employing the electronic sensors, score the magnet batons using a pneumatic claw, and capture the rolling goal with an inflatable loop.  

While at the FTC World Championship, Landroids was interviewed by the X PRIZE Foundation to promote the 2011 Moonbots challenge, visited by the Google executives, and meet and greet with the LEGO President.

Another global robotics competition for 9-14 year olds, the FLL World Festival, was coincided in St. Louis. Landrias, an all-girls team from LRC was called as “Team #1 Friends of FIRST” at the FLL World Championship. Landrias was selected by FIRST to be the stand-in team at the World Festival.  

The World Championship is not the only event that Landroids has recently won. Before leaving for St. Louis, the team had just received the 1st place NJ State 9th grade in eCYBERMISSION award for their Beach Erosion science research project.  The team has been experimenting with using wave energy and submersible wave pumps, enhanced by Coanda effect to self-replenish the beaches.  Each one of the four science competition participants, Karlin Yeh, Brian Lee, Stanley Cheung and Gage Farestad, will receive a $1,000 EE bond as the award from eCYBERMISSION.

The next upcoming robotics related event at Livingston will be during the Youth Appreciation Week on May 28. Team Landroids will assist Livingston Robotics Club to host the 2011 LRC Junior FIRST LEGO League Expo at Livingston Oval.

This largest outdoor Jr.FLL Expo for 6-9 year olds will have many hands-on activities to inspire young children to have interest in science and technology. One of the activities will be BioBus, a mobile laboratory to allow children to do experiments on cell biology using laboratory microscopes. Other fun and educational demonstrations are planned such as self-organizing nanobots. Visit http://www.LivingstonRobotics/expo for more information.