Hundreds of students, parents and educators sported colorful outfits showing team spirit at the LEGO League Regional Qualifier robot competition Saturday at Trident Technical College. The 36 teams from throughout the Lowcountry used their robotics skills from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. to qualify for the state competition.
Five elementary and five middle schools from Dorchester District 2 competed. Three of those teams will go to the state championship March 6 in Clemson. Summerville Elementary School’s “Summerville Seabots” team is going.
DuBose Middle School’s “The Robot Team” will compete in the state championship. They won first place in the Technical competition and second place in the teamwork competition. “Robotically Challenged,” the other DuBose team, won second place in the research competition. The Rollings Middle School “Robo Knights” team took third place in the research project competition and will go to state.
“Electric Force,” team made up of homeschooled kids from the Summerville area, won first place in the research project competition and will compete at state.
Students ages nine to 14 designed, constructed and programmed robots for the competition.
This year’s theme “Smart Move” Will help students solve transportation problems. The key is to access people, places, goods and services in the safest, most efficient way possible.
The students and robots were put to the test and carried out theme-related missions such as gaining access to different places and avoiding and surviving impacts.
There were eight tables in the main competition area on which the robots competed, but only two competitions took place at one time on adjacent tables.
Teams essentially competed against themselves and time. Each round was three minutes, during which the pre-programmed robots try to get as many points as possible by picking up objects from the far end of the table and transporting them back to the starting point.
Students were allowed to change out the robots various arms during competitions to better try to get the objects, but that was it.
“It’s autonomous. They can’t touch anything once in the playing field,” said teacher Craig Pelletier, team coach of DuBose’s The Robot Team.
Almost as busy as the competition room was the pit area, in the room next door. The pit area is where teams prepared and modified the robots’ missions on laptops and camped out when needed.
DD2’s goal for next year is to have teams at every elementary and middle schools, DD2 Career Development Coordinator Janice Jolly said. She raises funds for teams from sponsors, who send mentors to schools to help children design the robots. Sponsors also get their logo on the team t-shirt, robot and buttons.
“What they’re getting is a successful workforce,” Jolly said. “They’re planting the seed early.”