Volunteer for the First Lego League Robotic competition Dec. 8

The Technologies Department is seeking volunteers to serve as ushers, referees and judges at the annual First Lego League Robotic Competition Saturday, Dec. 8, 2018, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Students, faculty and staff may volunteer. Volunteer ushers will keep the event running on time by making sure teams are where they need to be at the right times. Referees will tally the scores as they complete tasks during the competition phase of the event and deduct penalties if needed. Judges will judge one of the three presentations (Core Values, Project, and Robot Design) that each team must make during the competition.

To volunteer, please contact AIIT Technical Training Specialist Chris Rogers at cerogers@southwest.tn.eduor (901) 333-4143.

The FLL Robotic competition is a fun event where middle school aged students have been given a set of challenges and asked to design and build a robot out of LEGOS to complete the challenges. The design and building are completed prior to the competition. At the competition, each team will have 2 ½ minutes to complete as many tasks as they can on a theme board and will be able to make three runs during the competitions. They will also be judged in three areas:

Core Values:

• Discovery: We explore new skills and ideas.
• Innovation: We use creativity and persistence to solve problems.
• Impact: We apply what we learn to improve our world.
• Inclusion: We respect each other and embrace our differences.
• Teamwork: We are stronger when we work together.
• Fun: We enjoy and celebrate what we do!

Project

Contestants will present an engineering project related to this year’s theme of INTO-ORBIT. Contestants will be asked to identify a physical or social problem faced by humans during long-duration space exploration and design a way to solve this problem.

Robot Design

Contestants will explain why they designed the robot the way they did and what challenges they faced during the project.

The top teams from this event will move on to the West Tennessee Regionals at the University of Memphis in January 2019 with the chance to advance to the 2019 FIRST Championship national competition in Houston, Texas April 17-20 and Detroit April 24-27.

Last year, a team that competed at the Southwest event placed in the Top 10 at the national championship. Watch this YouTube video for more details.