We (Cyberdragons Team #61818) began our First Lego League (FLL) journey as a casual club, meeting on Saturdays for coding and robotics. But with time, we decided that we wanted to become a competitive FLL team. With help from coaches and youth mentors, we learned how to design, build, and program a LEGO robot capable of completing missions.
Our FLL project focused on helping seagrass researchers, addressing the challenge of mapping seagrass - a crucial plant that helps combat climate change. Our team thought of a solution using AI-powered recognition with a waterproof Raspberry Pi camera, and this solution makes it more efficient to identify and protect seagrass habitats. We made a creative skit, complete with costumes, props, and even a surprise pop-out with Austin, a team member, that impressed the judges. Alongside our research, we kept revising our robot design and programming.
At the regional qualifiers, we earned second place in the robot match and received the Champion’s Award. Our success led us to the state championship, where we faced tougher competition and new challenges, including unpredictable practice tables and hard matches. Despite setbacks, we persevered, finishing first in the robot game and earned the runners up Champion’s Award and tying for second place with another team.
At California, in May, we got to go on a 4 day trip to Long Beach, California, where we participated in the Western Edge Invitational FLL competition.
As soon as the team got to the arena, we started setting up our pit area to present our project and robot to other teams and judges. We also added a krill-launching game to keep the audience interested. Then the opening ceremonies began as the volunteers told us the rules, procedures, and that we were here to have fun.
We presented our project to the judges that day, and added a few iterations. Austin now popped out from a trash can instead of a cardboard box like before. The judges looked surprised, and we hoped that they would remember our performance. We also went to a judging session for the coach/mentor award. We chose Coach Catherine because she was so kind, encouraging, and patient. She didn’t win the actual award, but the whole team could agree that she deserved it. We also had our first robot practice match. It didn’t go very well, but was decent. Also, the whole team was stressed because we only had 10 minutes to practice and there was a lot to cover.
The next day, we had our first match. It didn’t go very well. We got around 360 points, and our max was 575. Morale was low, and we had secured 10th place on the leaderboard. But our team still had time to walk around and see other pits from around the world and around the country.
The second match was still getting nowhere. We still remained in a low place in the leaderboard, and the team was getting a little frustrated.
The third match, however, we got 510 points, and we celebrated really hard because that was the best we had got in a long time. We placed 5th, but out of 80 teams in the competition, so we were still grateful.
The final day of the competition, we had an On the Spot challenge, where we had an alliance with 2 teams to work together on new missions we had no idea about. We ended up getting 125 points as our final score, and we were pretty happy about it.
We were also 2nd in the whole country of the USA!
After that, we went to the closing ceremonies and won the Engineering Excellence Award, and were very close to some awards, too.
To be continued... dun dun dun.....