Area youth shine at FIRST LEGO League Illinois championship tournaments

Posted January 14, 2018 10:00 pm

Submitted by Bob Hubberts

More than 1,000 spectators cheered on 700 contestants, age 9 to14, at the annual FIRST Lego League Illinois Championship events at Elgin Community College this past weekend.

Professor Tsunami Bots Waterlogged from Batavia won the first-place Champion's Award in the Hopper championship Jan. 14 and Sophisticated AI from Chicago won the first-place Champion's Award in the Einstein championship Jan. 13.

The top teams won by embodying the program's core values of teamwork and mutual respect while achieving excellence and innovation in both a robot game and innovative project.

FIRST Lego League is an international program for 9- to 16-year-old youth (ages vary by country) created in a partnership between FIRST and the Lego Group in 1998 to get children excited about science and technology and teach them valuable career and life skills. Children work alongside adult mentors to design, build, and program autonomous robots using Lego Mindstorms and create an innovative solution to a problem as part of their research project.

This year's challenge - Hydro Dynamics - called for teams to research and present their own creative solutions to the real-world topic: water.

The competition is judged in three areas: project; robot design, and core values, which embody aspects of teamwork and good sportsmanship. Top robot game scores are also honored.

The top three teams in each championship are:

• Sophisticated AI from Chicago won the first-place Champion's Award in the Einstein championship Saturday;

• Lovely Lego Ladies from Crystal Lake won the second-place Champion's Award in the Einstein championship Saturday;

• RogueBotics from Addison won the third-place Champion's Award in the Einstein championship Saturday;

• Professor Tsunami Bots Waterlogged from Batavia won the first-place Champion's Award in the Hopper championship Sunday;

• MerGeeks from Naperville won the second-place Champion's Award in the Hoppe championship Sunday;

• The Gumball Machines from Mount Prospect won the third-place Champion's Award in the Hopper championship Sunday.

To learn more about FIRST Lego League Illinois, visit www.firstillinoisrobotics.org, www.facebook.com/IllinoisFIRST/ or twitter.com/illinoisfirst, or www.instagram.com/illinoisfirst/.

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