Twenty-nine teams of students from across the county came together to showcase their STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) knowledge and problem-solving skills at the 2018 Laughlin Furniture and Piedmont LLC First Lego League Robotics Championship. The Shelby Intermediate Girl Bots team was the overall winner of this year’s tournament while the James Love TEAMbots was the first runner-up and the Fallston Dynamic Dawgs as the second runner-up. “I am extremely proud of the kids,” said Kim Kepner, principal at James Love Elementary. “They worked very well together and are very supportive of one another.” Teams work throughout the school year to research a topic and program missions for their LEGO MINDSTROMS EV3 robots to compete in head-to-head robot runs with other teams. During the event, the teams also develop presentations to communicate their innovative solutions for this year’s “challenge” of Hydrodynamics. People use water every day, but we probably don’t think much about how and why we use water. Whether it’s directly (drinking or washing) or indirectly (manufacturing the products we use or producing energy), we have a lot of different needs for water. The team’s Project challenge this season was to improve the way people find, transport, use, or dispose of water.
During the competition, each team had to work to achieve a task. They were challenged to use programs skill and teamwork to complete the challenge. The 2018 Team Building winners are: 1st Place – Fallston Dynamic Dawgs 2nd Place – Union HydroBots 3rd Place – Shelby Intermediate Storm Drain Savers “My favorite part was watching the parents enjoy watching the kids experience the variety of activities throughout the event,” said Tamara Goforth, director of elementary education. “I really think they enjoyed seeing all of the different aspects of the competition, especially viewing the innovative posters and the team building sessions.” Marketing is a very important part of a plan. Teams were challenged with putting together a presentation about their research and results, then presenting these to a panel of judges. The 2018 Presentation Award winners are: 1st Place – Casar Water Warriors 2nd Place – Fallston Dynamic Dawgs 3rd Place – Jefferson Hydro Stingers The design and programming of the robot is a critical part of this competition. Each team was able to choose and program the missions they wanted to perform as each mission was worth different amounts of points. These teams were able to work through any kinks during a practice run and then competed head-to-head during three other robot run competition sessions. From a scoring standpoint, the best of the three runs counted as the teams’ scores. The robot run category had the potential for earning the teams the most points of any part of the competition. The 2018 Robot Run winners are: 1st Place – James Love TEAMbotics 2nd Place – Shelby Intermediate Girl Bots 3rd Place – Fallston Dynamic Dawgs “We had a phenomenal day here,” said Megan Allen, coach of the James Love TEAMbotics. I am overwhelmed. We were not expecting to necessarily place top-three even though we knew we had a good group. The second place finish took our breath away.” The poster session was used for each team to have the opportunity to spread the word about what they were able to accomplish through their research project during the year. These posters were said to have “shown the fruits of their labor.” The 2018 Poster Session winners are: 1st Place – Shelby Intermediate SlayBots 2nd Place – Shelby Intermediate Girl Bots 3rd Place – Washington Cyberdolphins My favorite experience was the robot runs,” said Addison Wease, a member of the Shelby Intermediate Girl Bots, the overall winning team for the 2018 Robotics Championship. “We worked every day … and it all came together.” The Tanner Denton Spirit Award is presented each year to a student on each team who truly represents the spirit of the robotics competition. Tanner was a member of the Jefferson robotics team who passed away in 2013 from complications following an organ transplant. To honor his spirit, each team voted on one member to represent the qualities that Tanner displayed as a part his team. Tanner was humble, caring, a team player, helpful, knowledgeable, and a problem solver. The 2018 Tanner Denton Spirit Award winners are as follows:
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