BY GRANT ROWLEY
The Lego Robotics Competition hosted by the FHSU Maker Space is a competition for middle school students in grades 5-8 and will be hosted for the 16th time on Monday.
There will be schools from all across western Kansas able to compete in one of the five different competitions. The first four competitions are picked for each year as something new while the last competition stays the same.
This year the first competition is called the Roadblock Challenge. Each team will have to design a robot and program it to navigate a simple maze. The robot has to get to the end of the maze before five minutes and will get the option to run two times. The team needs to get the best time out of the competition to win and make sure to not hit any roadblocks.
The next competition is the Mountain Climber challenge. Students must make a robot that climbs up one side and down the other on a ramp at 45-degrees. If the robots fall over or off the mountain the team is disqualified. The team with the fastest time traversing the mountain will win.
The Time Trial Retriever Challenge is the third competition of the event. Student robots will have to follow a curving one-inch wide black line. At the end of the line, the robot will have to grab a red plastic cup and then turn around and go back to the starting area. Teams are timed on how close to completing the challenge to exactly one minute as possible.
If the robot gets stuck, falls off the playing field, or doesn’t complete the event within five minutes the robot is disqualified. If the robot follows the line but doesn’t pick up the cup or drops the cup but still makes it back, a thirty-minute penalty will be incurred.
The fourth event is Minesweeper where like the classic game, the robot has to find the mine on the playing field. The robot is placed on a black X in the center and will have to go around the playing field and stand over the mine. If the robot gets stuck or does not complete the task within five minutes the robot is disqualified. When the robot finds the mine the robot has to have some way of telling the judge that it has found the mine.
The final event is also the most popular – the Sumo Bots Tournament. Teams will be in a bracket and their robots will fight against each other one at a time. The robots don’t have a size restriction but can’t weigh more than two pounds. During the tournament, the robots will have to try to push the other one off the platform to win. Another way to win is if a part of the robot falls off the other robot onto the floor. If after 90 seconds both robots are on the playing field then the winner is determined by who weighs less.
The Lego Robotics Competition will take place from 10 a.m. through 3:00 p.m. Monday in the Memorial Union Ballroom.