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Middle School Robotics Teams Make Waves at FLL Qualifying Tournaments
The regular season for the MS Robotics First LEGO League (FLL) teams wrapped up during the past two weekends. This year the theme for the competition was Hydrodynamics, meaning that the robot challenges and the design project focused on the human water cycle.
After working for several months to prepare, the teams participated in three interviews at the tournament representing the different aspects of FLL. They were interviewed about their robot design, presented the design project they have developed and had a Core Values interview, which invovled the team working together to accomplish a challenge in five minutes, then answering questions about how htey worked together during the season.
Teams also get four two-and-a-half-minute table runs, in which the robots they built with the LEGO Mindstorms EV3 robotics kits had to autonomously drive around and interact with mission models built from LEGOs to score points.
Here is a brief summary of the work the teams have been doing and the results of their tournaments:
The Followers of Shmarky is a team of 6th graders participating in FLL for the first time. They named their team after the robot they built, affectionately known as “Shmarky.” For their design project, the 6th grade team presented their research on how to capture and reuse gray water for hydroelectric energy or other applications. They also worked hard throughout the day to improve their score and hit their best of 60 points with their robot in the last round, putting them in 10th place. An admirable outing for a first-year team!
The Sinking Ship is a team of 7th graders. They presented what they had been learning about Chicago’s combined sewer overflow problem. They described some of the ways the problem is currently being addressed, such as the promotion of “green infrastructure” to absorb more water before it becomes run-off into the sewers, and the Deep Tunnel Project, which has been in construction for almost 40 years and seeks to solve the problem by using large underground tunnels and reservoirs to temporarily store excess storm water until it can be treated so that it does not overflow into local waterways. With an increase in severe storms, the team proposed, these solutions might not be sufficient and considering ways to employ emerging nanotechnology to create other decentralized rapid filtering options at the sewer outfalls might be worth looking into. Their score of 85 points made their robot the third highest scoring robot in the tournament, and their solid performance in all three interviews made them one of the four teams from the tournament to advance to the state tournament in January!
Sophisticated AI is a team of 8th graders. They presented what they have been learning about hydroponics, Personal Food Computers and the Open Ag initiative at MIT from their research and their visit to The Plant in Chicago. They also outlined a proposed solution for how to make learning about growing food with smart hydroponics systems more accessible to a younger audience. The team had received a Jill Harris grant from Parker to purchase the materials to construct a simple version of a Personal Food Computer, called a Foam Farm, based on the plans made available from MIT. Their solution included better assembly instructions for the Foam Farm and a companion app that would enable younger kids unfamiliar with hydroponics to explore how it works using a growth simulation and game. Their top score of 105 points at the table put them in seventh place for the robot scores for the day in a very competitive field. The 8th grade team’s combined scores from all three interviews was enough to qualify them as one of the nine teams from the field of 29 to advance to the state tournament!
Congratulations to everybody on all three teams for their hard work and representing Parker so well at this event!
6th Grade—The Followers of Shmarky
Arjun Kalra
Noah Pendo
Oliver Cahnman
Krish Malhotra
Grant Koh
Jaylen Jin
Warner Vance
Josh Gourdji
Caleb Aklilu
7th Grade—The Sinking Ship
Rocque Lipford
Wyatt Chatalas
Henry Weil
Ryan Kershner
Timo Kiep
Drew Klauber
Jack Kahan
8th Grade—Sophisticated AI
Star Rothkopf
Jacobe Richard
Ryder Selikow
Tassos Chronopoulos
Finn Hall
Jacob Boxerman
Lucas Garcia-Sjogrim
Colin Brown
Tess Wayland
Thanks to Adrian Leo for co-coaching Sophisticated AI and serving as lead coach for The Followers of Shmarky. And thanks to Jen Marshall for co-coaching the 6th graders with Mr. Leo.
All three teams will present aspects of what they have been doing this season at a Morning Ex in early January, and the 7th and 8th graders will participate in the state tournament in mid-January.
Francis W. Parker School educates students to think and act with empathy, courage and clarity as responsible citizens and leaders in a diverse democratic society and global community.