Benjamin Logan Middle School students from Team Road Signs won the overall Champion Award Saturday at the FIRST LEGO League Regional Qualifier in Beavercreek.
Team members include Dylan Vance, Maximus Clappsaddle, Wyatt Gordon, Gabriel Elsasser and Powel Willoby. The Champion Award recognizes a team that “embodies the First LEGO League experience, by fully embracing core values while achieving excellence and innovation in both the Robot Game and Design, and the Innovation Project.
As a result of their performances at the regional contest, BLMS Team Road Signs and Team Traffic Cones each earned spots to compete at districts during January at Wright State University.
Team Traffic Cones won the overall Core Values Award, which recognizes a team that excels across the inspiration, teamwork and gracious professionalism categories. Team members include Ethan Van Winkle, Abigail Vance, Claire Rhodes, Wyatt LeVan and Utah Coleman.
Fellow BLMS Team Upperclassmen also performed well in the Robot Game, achieving fourth place in points scored, but not placing overall with a chance to move on. The team members were awarded with the Gracious Professionalism “I’m A Professional” pin.
Team Members include Allie Fay, Kate Hahn, Liam Sweeney, Kelley Forsythe, Hayden Godwin and Paul Gantt.
This year’s theme for FLL is City Shaper and teams had to identify a problem in a community and present a solution with a focus on inclusion and sustainability. This Innovative Project is presented to judges along with designing and building a robot using an EV3 brick and LEGO’s to accomplish missions for points on a game field all while displaying the Core Values of FIRST.
All three teams, totaling 17 students, are coached by Gretchen Powell and Michelle Gantt.
As part of the overall experience this year, the teams were able to visit the Honda Heritage Center where they saw first-hand how robotics is used in manufacturing. They also were able to visit the Amazon Fulfillment Center in Etna, where they saw how autonomous robots were being used to fulfill orders placed online.
Speakers from the Ohio Department of Transportation also visited the students and discussed the SMART Mobility Corridor and how autonomous vehicles play a part in safety on our roads.