Lego Robots Rule The World

A team of Honolulu home schoolers wins Hawaii’s robotic Lego title, and now prepares for the world championship

how to apply what they learned to improve the quality of life. “Kids love that,” he says. “Everyone wants to make the world a better place - science and technology help us (do that).”

Instilling a love of all things left-brained is a goal of FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), a multinational nonprofit founded by Dean Kamen, the inventor of Segway HT. In its own words, FIRST “aspires to transform culture, making science, math, engineering and technology as cool for kids as sports are today.” FLL is a partnership between FIRST and Lego.

Assistant coach Trisha Lam, mother of team captain Carter, says SPIDERS learned only last month that it would be going to Atlanta. “As an unofficial competition you have to apply to attend the world festival, so we had applied but we didn’t find out until Feb. 17 that we were invited - nine weeks!” she says. (Hawaii will have its first official FLL tournament this year, which will automatically qualify the winner for a spot at the World Festival). At the same time FLL decided to replace the laminate mats, which were bubbling, with mats made of a different material, basically reinventing the surface upon which the robot performs its tasks.

The differences affected almost everything, from the light sensors, to how fast the robot moves and how well it turns. “So that’s why we’re all excited when certain things work because all of a sudden they weren’t working anymore with the new mats,” she says, adding that the team made changes to the robot and the program to adapt. But, she says, “That’s kind of what’s cool about this whole process is that’s what real-life engineers do - they work on a situation then something changes and they find out the material they’re using was too brittle and they have to use a different material which changes what they’re doing. It’s just real life ... (we) have to do it all really fast.”

SPIDERS is seeking sponsors to help defray the cost of the $18,000 trip. For information, call 737-1708 or e-mail .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

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