The robot built by the team of 20 students was in working order but had a few glitches that needed to be programmed out. It moved too fast across the test area, bumping items and breaking LEGO obstacles.
"Yesterday we changed the batteries and now have to fix the timing," said Jessica Dearden, 13, an eight-grader on the team. "It's fun basically because you don't know what's going to happen."
All the kinks need to be worked out of the system by today, however, as the team is part of 60 total teams - 600 middle school-aged kids - from across Iowa competing at Howe Hall at Iowa State University.
This is the fifth year the FIRST LEGO League competition has been held at ISU. The competition is an international event in which students use the LEGO MINDSTORMS Robotic Invention System to build a robot that can handle each year's set of missions.
"It's like a sporting event where everyone's just cheering for every team, instead of just cheering for one team," said Jake Ingman, chair of the event planning committee and graduate student in human-computer interaction. "It's really positive in that way, and that's really fun. It's overwhelmingly positive."
The competition will test the student competitors' skills in designing a robot made from LEGO bricks and programming it to complete as many tasks as possible in 2 1/2 minutes. The students also have to participate in interviews and presentations related to their work and this year's theme, "Ocean Odyssey," as part of the event.
"I think it is amazing," said Randy Farnum, seventh- and eighth-grade science teacher at Boone Middle School and co-coach of the team. "Last year being the first year (we competed), we weren't quite sure what to expect. This year we're extremely excited."
Farnum got involved with the event to add an activity for students to participate in other than athletics in the morning and because he enjoys what the students get to do.
"I think it's fun," he said. "We get to build LEGO robots and make them traverse the course and do different obstacles."
Dearden, who is competing in her second year, also got involved because of the nature of the event.
"I thought it'd be fun to work with robots," she said.
"I just like to build with LEGOs because you can build just about anything," said Nate Anderson, 14, as he finalized one of the team's presentations.
Anderson said he was surprised coming into the event, since he thought the robots would be pre-programmed.
Dearden said getting the programming correct is the toughest part of the competition, although her favorite part is the presentation.
Participating in the event has interested Dearden more in science and engineering, she said. That is one of the goals of the event, Ingman said.
"We get a lot of feedback from the kids," Ingman said. "One thing that we see is it can really change how kids interact socially with other people."
Ingman said the event is not just for the participants and families, as other people can enjoy watching the competition and participating in the other engineering activities that will be available throughout the day.
"It's amazing to just sit back and watch," Farnum said. "You constantly hear 'Next year, next year, what can we do next year.'"
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