2024 Coburg regional First Lego League

What is First Lego League (FLL)?

FIRST Lego League is quite old, with the original branches starting out in 1988, however this event in late October was our School’s first appearance. The competition introduced critical thinking to the students and exercised their problem solving skills.

The competition board consists of 12 challenges which are each worth an amount of points - (Maximum number of points is 625, but as you will see in the points chart below that is really hard), some being multistage and some being interactive with another team. These tasks followed a common theme - “Submerged” -  and one example of a task was lifting up a submarine to the surface.

UHS at FLL 2024

On the 17th of October 2024, 13 students from Year 7 and 8 from our school’s Robotics Club proceeded to the First Lego League competition at St Fidelis Catholic Primary School Hall in Coburg. Our devoted middle school students spent countless hours - up to 8 on the field and up to 24 overall - developing robots and robot code. We were introduced to the software and hardware near the start of the year and experimented to see what we could make these simple motor and sensor robots do, so when it came time to show our skills at FLL we were ready - or so we thought. 

With only a few hours of practice time left the UHS robots were struggling with tasks they would otherwise do with ease. Our code had corrupted, and we needed a fix, so we sat down, in the last hour of practice before the tournament, and revised everything, all 97 lines of code, and tweaked all 228 values (some to insane precision). In the end, this all paid off with our code being restored by the time we got to the event. Everyone there was so friendly and encouraging, and we got feedback after our test runs which really helped us develop our understanding of this coding software.

Results

This year, 7 teams competed in this competition from our region. We ourselves had two teams competing - UHS Red and UHS Green. UHS Green ended up in 6th place due to technical difficulties, while UHS Red finished 3rd. We would like to congratulate the Semantics 101 team for making nationals and progressing to Sydney to compete on the 30 of November.

Student Experiences

All of the students had a great time, and this is what they had to say about their experience:

Emil Graljuk: 

First Lego League was an experience I won’t forget. During this tournament we were working on robots made out of Lego and we had to work with our team members to create possibilities for our robots to complete these missions. As we were working through these missions we stumbled across many different problems and issues. A particular issue we had was a corrupted code. We would overcome this by using all our team’s strategies and communication skills to rebuild the code so we could make sure it worked. We felt really proud when we finally got our robot to complete the missions. Overall FLL was an incredible experience - whether one has a lot of experience in coding or none, it is an amazing experience to attend.

Tanush Thakkar:

I was on the UHS Red team at FLL 2024. It was really good, really fun, and it was overall a great experience where I got to learn a lot. In the code, we were doing a lot of trial and error and fixing the code bit by bit. In the robot we had to experiment by adding  more features and additions to the robot. At the start of the competition we had a few practice runs, and scored  a hundred points. When it came to the real ones, we had three rounds. 
In the first and  second round, we got a hundred points and then we got 95 points, and they were our greatest efforts. So then we had around one or two hours just to focus on the code, and then we ended up getting 145 points and going from last all the way to third 


At the start of the year, Mr. Baxter, our teacher, would give us the Lego robot and we would just have fun with it, but then he told us about FLL, and then he had ordered the map so we could practise. After that we started getting serious and made the robot.  We had a good two or three weeks to work on it. and then we went to the FLL competition at Coburg and the rest of it is history. Overall, I got to learn a lot and it was a really good experience; not just for right now but for my future too.

We were super nervous about the competition. We had no idea what to expect, and (like most engineers) we were terrified of failing. But guess what? We rocked it and had an awesome time! We all give a huge shoutout to Mr. Baxter for being our incredible coach and running the Robotics club every Wednesday after school. Without him, we wouldn’t have been able to do a thing!

If you’re interested in joining the Robotics Club, come on over to 902 from 3:10 to 4:15 (or later if you’re lucky). We’re starting some exciting new projects involving 3D printing and spy cameras!

By Aarav Ajithkumar & Ishaan Sharan - Year 7