Sporting their electric green team shirts, a team of 4th and 5th grade neighborhood friends from the Palisades, competed in the First Lego League Robotics Tournament earlier this month.
Team Pali Tech placed seventh out of 14 teams in robot performance in the competition held at Milken Community School. Team members Jack Dawson, Roark Jefferson and Ben Kamer of Palisades Elementary and Gavin Goldsmith and Sam Volokh of Mirman School were amongst the youngest competitors at a competition designed for nine to 14-year-olds and is primarily comprised of middle school teams.
Photo courtesy of Marsha Kamer
Pali Tech, in their rookie season, built and programmed a robot that performed several missions like opening a door, delivering cargo and selecting a token based on its color.
“It was really challenging completing all of the missions because you have to be very exact,” Jefferson said. “You have to get everything just right.”
The team was judged in several areas including robot design, robot performance and project design and received exemplary scores on their mechanical design, project research and presentation. The judges commented how impressed they were by the team’s use of color sensors and by the reliability of their robot.
“It was a real rush to get our robot to do all the missions in the two and a half minute time limit,” Kamer said.
Photo courtesy of Marsha Kamer
Since August, when the First Lego League released the competition challenge, the team had been dedicating five or more hours each week to building and programing their robot for competition.
The team formed earlier this year after several of the members expressed a desire to learn more about robotics and programming. They practice in a garage workshop in the Alphabet Streets where a regulation practice table was built for their use.
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.
