The FIRST Lego League team, the Minions Too, was the winner of the recent New Jersey State championship. The team will compete in the FLL World Festival this spring. Team members include 10 fifth and sixth grade students from WW-P schools. The team coaches are Tim and Catherine Foley and members of the MidKnight Inventors, a competition team from High Schools North and South.
“FLL teams were required to build and program Lego Mindstorm robots, which complete missions centered on this year’s World Class theme,” says Kathy Rogers, the team advisor. “The students must also develop a research project focused on improving education. The mission of FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering, and technology skills; inspire innovation; and foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and leadership.”
Minions Too members include Ishita Taparia and Rhythm Satav from Community Middle School; Mary Nielsen and Stephen Foley from Village School; Rahul Datta, Samarth Sogani, and Saagar Shah from Millstone River School; and Nikhil Srinivasan and Raghunandan Raman from Grover Middle School.
Lego Ninja Warriors, a robotics team of grade seven students from West Windsor and Plainsboro, qualified for the FIRST Lego League state championship at a December 6 competition at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. Team members include Aparna Rajesh from Community Middle School, and Grover Middle School students Aditya Sivakumar, Michael Rebelo, Rasali Kodikara, and Vibhu Gandikota. They earned the first place prize in the robot design category. The team is coached by Rajesh Thundil and Siva Shanmughanathan.
The Bender Bots team of students from Village, Grover, and Community School created Aqua NaaVi, a project to help visually impaired people swim with confidence. The team has been competing in the Pennsylvania region for last three years and has been recognized with awards every year.
Working with the theme of world class education, the students conducted individual research and consulted various individuals involved with swimming in order to identify problems faced by visually impaired people who want to learn to swim. They soon realized that visually impaired swimmers depend on the assistance from their “tappers” to prevent them from getting injured in the pool.
Aqua NaaaVi is a device that will alert the swimmer with audio signals about their surroundings in the pool. This will provide comfort in the pool and prevent accidents.
The Bender Bots received the second position champions trophy for their performance in research, problem solving, sharing innovative solutions with local communities, learning and adopting core values in their day to day lives, robot building, and programming.
Many of the students, parents, and peers associated with the team have developed a growing interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and STEM careers. The team will compete in the regional championship to be held at University of Pennsylvania on February 14. Team coaches include West Windsor residents, Vish Kedia and Rajesh Ramachandrand.
