From: WREG News Channel 3
Posted Jan 27, 2019
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Students from Memphis and Shelby County competed in the West Tennessee FIRST LEGO League 2019 championship.
FIRST LEGO League is an international competition hosted by an organization called FIRST.
Each year, teams are tasked with researching a real-world problem and developing a solution. Teams design, build and program robots using LEGO bricks, and then compete in the Robot Game. Teams also design their own costumes and display boards.
The competition was held Saturday at the University of Memphis under the direction of Dan Kohn, associate professor of engineering at the University of Memphis, and Frank Niedzwiedz, president of R & N Systems Design, a Memphis-based engineering company.
Out of the 46 teams that competed, 38 of them were from Memphis, Collierville, Germantown, Bartlett, Cordova and Arlington. The teams were made up of five to 10 students who were between the ages of 9 and 14.
This year’s challenge was “Into Orbit,” and teams had to complete tasks related to going into space.
The competition included programming a robot to complete certain tasks with a 2-and-a-half minute window, explaining FIRST LEGO League’s core values to the judges and performing a project presentation to a second set of judges. Around 350 students and 150 parents and teachers attended.
