On November 21st, Hillsborough High School hosted one of the nine regional qualifying tournaments of FIRST LEGO League (FLL), a robotics competition for elementary and middle school students. Three teams from the Livingston Robotics Club participated in this qualifying competition which had a total of twenty-three teams from many towns in New Jersey. Only 9 teams from this event will have a chance to advance on to the State Championship Tournament in December.

The FLL competition has many activities with categories in the areas of research project presentation, teamwork, technical presentation, and robot performances.

This year’s Challenge, "Smart Move", is about transportation issues including improvement of safety and efficiency of transportation. Students have been engaged in science research and have prepared to present their innovative solutions. They have also been designing and building their robots to perform tasks in "autonomous" mode to complete a set of predestinated missions in two and a half minutes.

This year, Livingston Robotics Club has 7 FLL teams and one Junior FLL team with members from Livingston, West Orange, Short Hills, Rutherford, and Kearny. The FLL teams are split up to compete in three regional qualifying tournaments with Hillsborough as the first.

In the morning, the teams were judged on robot design, research project, and teamwork in private sessions. The most exciting part of the event was the robot competition in the afternoon. Each match had two teams running their robots head-to-head against each other in a sport-like event. Each team had three rounds to achieve the highest score.

Landroids, the 2009 US Open Champion’s award winner with five members from Livingston, presented their "Deer Avoidance" project in the morning, which dealt with traffic safety and deer deterrence.

Landroids was the first participating team of the club to engage in the robot matches. The team was faced with difficulties because the flood lights from the videotaping equipment had a direct impact on the team’s robot’s light sensor readings. Thanks to the team’s persistence in reconfiguring the robot’s design and programming after each round, Landroids scored 335 out of total score of 400, placing them third in robot competition. However, that was not enough to secure a place for them in the state tournament. Only the top two teams in the robot performance category would be chosen to move on to the state level. The team needed to win in another category.

Alpha Force, a team with two students from Livingston, two from Kearny, and one from Rutherford, started its match next. They also faced with difficulties. The robot was hitting a lot of rough patches on the field table and had to be adjusted accordingly. The team was ranked in 8th place in robot performance, but did well in presenting their robot design and their "Keep Kids Safe" research project on innovative solutions for school crosswalk safety.

Thunderclan, a rookie team with two students from Livingston and three from Short Hills, also faced problems in their robot matches because of the strong overhead lighting. They earned 7th place in robot performance, but they were confident about their "G.M. Segway" project presentation, a project that dealt with a new design of an small, green energy vehicle that can be used in local communities or in cities.

Alpha Force received the first place award in technical presentation on their robot design and strategies. Thunderclan won first place for their research project with special recognition from judges that the project will have a positive impact on communities throughout the world. Landroids was recognized in many areas including outstanding robot design, research project, and community outreach, which resulted in them winning the Champion’s award -- the most prestigious award in each FLL event. All three teams qualified to move on to the state level.

Three other Livingston Robotics Club teams -- r2d2, SciBoTech, and Landrias -- will compete at the Montclair Qualifier on December 4th. The last team, Technophiles, will compete at the Sparta Qualifier on December 5th. All qualified teams from these tournaments will move on to compete in the New Jersey State Championship Tournament at Mt. Olive High School in Flanders on December 12th. The LRC Junior FLL team, Spongebots, will be joining everyone there for an exhibition.

For more information on FLL and activities of LRC, please visit Landroids website at http://www.landroids.org.