Friday, November 27, 2009
NILES—The Art Outreach Gallery and the Eastwood Mall Complex will host the Northeast Ohio FIRST Robotics Alliance FIRST Lego League Practice Scrimmage from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Dec. 5.
The event will take place in the Eastwood Mall Community Room located in the concourse between Dillard’s and Macy’s.
FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Lego League teams build Lego Mindstorms robots and program them to navigate a playing field, scoring points by completing a variety of theme-based missions. The teams of students ages 9 to 14 are also asked to propose, research, and present a solution to a current problem related to the challenge theme.
This year’s FLL challenge theme is the transportation-based “Smart Move.”
Area high school FIRST robotics teams will also be at the event to demonstrate their robots and answer questions about high school-level FIRST programs.
Teams from middle schools in Trumbull, Ashtabula and Mahoning counties were invited to the scrimmage to practice project presentations and run practice matches with their robots. The scrimmage is meant to help prepare local teams to compete at one of two official FLL regional competitions taking place Dec. 12 in Canton and Cleveland.
Ohio FLL teams compete with each other at official regional tournaments across the state. Qualifying teams will move on to the Ohio FLL state championship in Dayton. The state champions attend the FLL world festival at the FIRST championship event in Atlanta, Ga.
For more information about the FIRST organization, go to www.usfirst.org or first.neofra.com.