Last month, sixth graders Ethan Hao, Randy Hui and Terry Zhu, and fifth graders Isabella Du, Richard Li and Aixuan Sun, took first place at a First Lego League Northern California Qualifier event held at Piedmont Middle School. Known collectively as Tierra Bots, the team scored 360 points, and presented an innovation project for a robot that specializes in cleaning solar panels. The team plans to enter the regional competition in February.
In November, Harker fifth graders Aaron Luo, Brandon Labio, Nathan Yee and Trisha Shivakumar won the Champion’s Award at the NorCal First Lego League robotics qualifying tournament. The team received the award for having top performances in all areas of the competition, including robot design, project and core values. The team’s performance also earned it a spot at the NorCal regional tournament.
Another team of Harker fifth graders — Ava Zarkesh, Ivanya Sadana, Risa Chokhawala and Urvi Singhvi — won the Judges Award and the ‘Rising Stars Award’ for setting an example for other teams and producing a solution for two very different problems while adhering to the competition’s core values.
The team later competed at the FLL NorCal Peninsula Championships, where it won the Robot Design Award. The award is given to a team whose robot performs consistently well in areas such as efficiency, durability and challenge missions.
On Jan. 19, Harker’s own “Eagle Bots” FIRST Lego League Team – made up of fifth graders Sahil Jain, Farhan Ansari, Mihir Gupta, Daniel Wu and Jaden Chyan – was awarded Most Innovative Solution at the Northern California FLL championship (held at the University of California, Berkeley) for a science project it devised to help astronauts eat better.
The students’ project explored how the quality of food can affect the mood of astronauts in space, who must cope with a lack of fresh produce in addition to constant isolation, leading to issues with physical and emotional health. Upon researching these topics, they found that smell and taste are closely linked, and developed an idea for an “AroMask” that astronauts can wear to immerse themselves in the scents of their favorite foods to stimulate hunger. The team consulted with psychiatrists and NASA scientists as part of its research.
First Lego League robotics team Alpha Wolves – sixth graders Jordan Labio, Dustin Miao and Kabir Ramzan – had an admirable run at the Razorback World Invitational in Fayetteville, Ark., held May 17-20. The team placed second in the robot alliance competition and overall project, and took a respectable ninth place in robot performance. The Alpha Wolves qualified for the event in January after winning the Silicon Valley Championship. A world-level competition, the Razorback World Invitational featured 58 of the best teams in the country, and 14 from around the globe. More than 35,000 teams competed in this FLL season, which started last summer. Only 500 qualified for world-level events.
At the NorCal FIRST Lego League Silicon Valley Championship in late January, a team made up of Harker sixth graders Jordan Labio, Dustin Miao and Kabir Ramzan – known as Alpha Wolves – took first place among the 35 teams at the event. The team’s robot performed exceptionally throughout the competition, scoring the highest two runs (one with 285 points and another with 265) and being the only robot to score more than 200 points on all four of its runs. Competition was fierce, as each team at the tournament had qualified by finishing in the top three at other local events. This win puts Harker’s team in the running to compete against other regional champions from across the world.
The Alpha Wolves’ next event is the Northern California FLL Innovations Expo in March, which the team was invited to attend after presenting a group research project at a previous event in November. Their project was one of 50 selected from 500 entries.