A team of Hilo keiki will pit their Lego robot against 49 others in Honolulu today at the FIRST Lego League State Tournament.
The FIRST Lego League is a program that introduces robotics and STEM fields to students between the ages of four and 16 through the familiar toy building blocks of Lego. Teams compete to program a Lego robot capable of reliably completing a sequence of tasks while presenting their work to a panel of judges.
Seven Hilo students make up the Lava Bots, the only East Hawaii FIRST Lego League (FLL) team. In November, the Lava Bots competed at the Hawaii Island District FLL Tournament in Kealakehe, and were awarded the title of Overall Hawaii Island District Champion, and were invited to compete at the statewide tournament on Oahu today.
The Lava Bots formed three years ago and have won the district tournament each time. But of the 50 teams competing, only one will be able to proceed to compete in the World Festival in Houston, Tex., in 2025, said Lava Bots coach Scott Geib.
But the competition isn’t fierce. Geib said the focus of the event is “not necessarily about winning, but what they call ‘gracious professionalism.’”
In fact, Geib said, only about one third of the competition is about the robot’s performance. The rest of the event tests participants’ ability to formally present their project and summarize their work to judges.
“They go into a room for thirty minutes, no coaches, no parents, just the judges and their robot,” Geib said. “It’s a bit of a black box … but I think sometimes kids do better when the parents aren’t there watching.”
As for the robot itself, Geib said the teams assemble it based on guidelines provided by FLL. Any official Lego piece is permissible on the machine, for example, but there are limits to how many mechanical components are allowed.
When demonstrating their robot, teams have 150 seconds to carry out up to 15 tasks of varying complexity, such as using a plow attachment to push an object to a goal. The theme of the 2024 FLL season is “submerged,” so many of the tasks during a practice session Wednesday had a nautical theme, such as a shipwreck or a submersible.
Geib said successfully carrying out all 15 tasks within the time limit is difficult to impossible, so teams have to decide ahead of time which ones to prioritize.
“Unlike a lot of robotics competitions, these robots run autonomously based on their programming,” Geib said. “So a lot of the work is in the design of the robot and the coding, it’s not about who can pilot the robot the best.”
At the same time, Geib acknowledged that teams can push the limits of what is still, ultimately, a toy.
“It is still Lego,” Geib said. “It is not a precision machine, like a Tesla … Although maybe those aren’t precision machines either.”
The team was optimistic at practice Wednesday. Nine-year-old Hunter Arasato said he thinks their robot is “decent,” and a lot more complicated than many other robots showcased by other teams. Many other robots are much smaller than the Lava Bots’, which features tools like a “scorpion tail” pivoting arm attachment, a snow plow and a lifting arm.
12-year-old Micah Geib — son of Scott Geib — said the Lava Bots have put more time and effort into their machine than some other teams.
“They probably only get to work on it, like, one or two hours a week,” Micah Geib said. “We have office hours, so we get to work on ours a lot more.”
Office hours, Scott Geib explained, are one-on-one sessions where a team member can work with the coach to troubleshoot specific problems with the robot or its programming.
During a Wednesday practice run of the team’s presentation, members said their work on the robot allowed them to meet deep sea experts such as Nicole Yamase — the 20th person in the world to descend to the Challenger Deep, the deepest known point on the earth’s seabed — and researchers aboard the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research vessel Okeanos Explorer.
Team members were sanguine about their odds of victory, especially when their coach reminded them that their goal isn’t to “beat” other teams but simply to do their best.
This could be some team members’ last FLL competition. Sixth graders Chan Shih and Andrew Arasato said they want to do more sports next year, which will take up more of their time. Many team members said they don’t know if they want to pursue STEM careers, instead wanting to be professional athletes.
Even so, for most team members, hanging out with their friends was their favorite part of being on the Lava Bots.
“We’re all friends already,” said 6th-grader Liam Bauer.
A livestream of the event is viewable at tinyurl.com/8keujwya. Scott Geib said the Lava Bots’ events will take place at 11:30 a.m., 12:30 p.m. and 1:30 p.m. today.
Email Michael Brestovansky at mbrestovansky@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
