Robotics team show they are programmed to win

Engineering Innovators: Somersfield Academy's Robotics team

December 08, 2011 — Rookie Somersfield Academy Lego Robotics Team, under the guidance of coaches, Innovations teacher Mark Brown and Dr Dorte Horsfield, came away with three trophies at First Lego League (FLL) Toronto Regional Competition over the weekend of November 26 and 27. Their robot won by 25 points over St Michael’s College School to secure the robot challenge trophy. In addition, they came away with the trophy for most promising new entry and the trophy for the best innovative solution to a problem in the food distribution industry.

Team members Evan Farrow, Robin Horsfield, Joshua Irvine, Joshua Kirk, Sam Mello, Jonathan Moore, Adam Pimentel, Ryan Stocek and Mackenzie van Zanden had to compete against 18 other FLL teams in the regional competition. All teams are members of FLL, a learning programme that uses Lego robotics to introduce young students to the world of engineering and technology while building Lego robots to complete predetermined missions. Every year FLL challenges teams worldwide with a science-based challenge.

This year’s challenge concerned food contamination, and teams were asked to come up with innovative solutions to contamination problems during food production and food distribution. The teams had to give presentations on their chosen subject, demonstrate teamwork, build robots to complete given challenges, and show that they can achieve more together than alone.

The Somersfield team, with the help of Mr Blair Simmons of Bermuda Container Lines as an industry resource, focused on the transport of food to Bermuda via containers and came up with an innovative idea to keep insects and pests away from dry containers.

“The boys’ idea was to create aluminium boxes to go inside the containers,” explained Mr. Brown. “These aluminium boxes would have closer seams than the containers’, and would also be coated with a sugar/borax solution that would kill the roaches should they eat it (the idea being that the roaches would be less likely to get in because of the closer seams, and they would want to eat the sugar/borax solution because of the sugar).”

Coach Dr Horsfield noted, “As a rookie team, the boys were just excited to enter and participate in the event. The surprise came when the team moved further and further into the finals of the head-to-head playoff round of the robot competition. The final two minutes put the team to their most challenging test and the joy was immense when their robot won.”

“Overall it was an incredible day for Bermuda’s first and only Lego Robotics Team,” she noted.

Originally published in The Royal Gazette