It was the day of the First Lego League Tournament. Everyone was really excited as it was the build up of months of hard work.
Robot Liz-ii arrived first and positioned herself in the allocated space in the foyer at Portsmouth university. As Agile Panthers arrived, the team members put up the practice board and models on the floor to help practice later. All our bags and coats were piled together as we prepared ourselves for the day.
We saw members of the other teams arriving to make eight in all. The other teams were small and tall in height as teams came from around Hampshire – Portsmouth, Ringwood and Reading – Primary and secondary. We were the only independent team made of members from different schools from Year 7s in Bayhouse and Crofton secondary schools.
Before we knew it, we were called to the Introductory meeting by the national FLL coordinator that worked for IET (Institute of Engineering and Technology) that had already organised and attended many other tournaments in the UK. There will be about 40 in all. Then we were ready to start the competition.
First of all we gave our project presentation to the judges in a lecture theatre on devising a SMART cat’s collar. When worn, it would detect when a cat was going to pounce on a bird or other creature by monitoring heart beat and movement and would give off a shrill noise to frighten the prey. This is important as bird numbers in the UK are declining and the domestic cat is partially responsible.
Next the judges interviewed the team about how we all got on especially when we came from different schools. In FLL this is known as “Core Values” and one of the key factors in the competition. It is very important to respect and listen to each others’ ideas and help each out especially when the going got tough. Over the last few months, yes, things had been difficult at times but we overcame it and here we are today.
Next came the final challenge, the Robot Mission. The team psyched themselves up for this part of the tournament with Lottie, Morgan and Tom taking it in turns to run and position the robot on the board.
Agile Panthers were first on with another team – I cannot remember who the other team were. There were two tables placed together and two teams run robot missions at the same time. After a couple of minutes to sort ourselves and position our accessories for smooth changes, the starter called 3 – 2 – 1 and then Lottie and Tom started the Robot. Two and a half minutes is all you have to complete as many missions as you can with your preprogrammed robot and gain as many points as possible.
In our first run, the ‘shark’ then ‘the pig and seal’ missions worked perfectly but the ‘push pull’ to get the food, very annoyingly, did not. That meant that we couldn’t do our missions to distribute the food loosing us 60 points. We just managed to complete the dog mission and our time was up scoring a total of 87 points.
After the first run we were in third position behind Meon Juniors and Ringwood secondary school but hoped to improve our score in the next two runs. In the Robot mission part of the Tournament, each team have three runs during the afternoon and their highest score counts. Although we were hopeful to improve on our score, our robot crashed during the remaining two runs and we tragically got very low scores. Back to the drawing board for another day and another tournament.
Feeling disappointed and totally rejected after our lower than expected Robot mission score, we waited around for the Results Presentation. Then all the teams filed into the lecture theatre and waited.
Firstly, medals were given out to all team members for attending the Tournament and all the referees and judges were thanked as without them none of this would be possible. Then the results of the individual sections were given, only announcing the positions of the top three out of eight teams.
However we did tremendously well as Agile Panthers came second in the Technical Presentation, third in the Robot mission, we WON the Core Values and ungraded in the Project presentation. Wow what an achievement and, after talking to the judges, I understand we came third out of eight overall. Brilliant!
Finally David Hill at Portsmouth University and Mandy Workman from IET were thanked for organising a great First Lego League Tournament. Congratulations go out to Meon Juniors in Portsmouth for being the overall winners. They will go to the UK finals at the end of February in Bristol.
Thank you all to Agile ICT for your support along the way including Tshirts and websites. It was really appreciated. What an amazing learning curve for the Agile Panthers team as it was a truly unforgettable experience.
