The Lego team competed in the Lego competition this past Saturday. Although the team did not place in the tournament, but the best team obtained 4th place.

“The Lego competitions are a series of events the Lego teams design a [lego] robot for,” Alexis Renderos, sophomore and lead mentor for the lego teams, said. “These robots are made to play certain competitive games. For example, the final competition has the students creating a robot that can retrieve small foam cubes from platforms of varying heights. These robots are built with a strong emphasis on efficiency and iterable designs.”

Students have exactly two weeks in between competitions. The students are given three total meetings after school for about two hours, but they are allowed to ask for more time to meet if needed, to build their robot.

“For some competitions, I give them some possible suggestions, but of course, I don’t give them complete instructions on designs,” Renderos said. “I have made presentations in which I give the students different ideas on parts which they can later take and put together to create a robot. I do give them ideas on what type of part to use, such as creating a caster to obtain a better turning radius, but I never tell the students exactly what to make for their robots. I only tell them what parts they can use. Students are expected to use completely original designs with support from me and the other mentors.”

According to Renderos, all competitions have a specific scoring method. The competitions vary heavily, but they are usually based upon who can perform the task fastest. For example, the competition named Robo-Buckets was based on which team can drop the highest amount of foam cubes in a row of buckets, with a tie breaker being speed. The final competition is based on which team can grab the most and highest value cubes from the platforms in the pre-designated time frame.