The Hayesville Middle School Lego Robotics teams had a successful day on Saturday April 2, at Cherokee Central Schools in Cherokee, N.C. where they competed against 43 other teams from the western region for 14 awards in the first Smoky Mountain Area Robotics Teams Lego Competition. Hayesville Middle School was represented by five teams and brought home four of the 14 awards that were presented.
At the competition, there were three criteria that the teams were judged on: Core Values, Project and Robot Design. For each criterion, students were escorted to a judging room where they present their project, their robot design and the core values that they learned throughout the process, such as teamwork and collaboration.
This year the First Lego League challenge was titled “Trash Trek.” For the project, each team was challenged to choose a piece of trash and identify a problem with the way it is handled. Once each team chose a piece of trash, students were to create an innovative solution to the problem they identified. At the competition each team presented their project to a panel of judges.
Team members also worked to program an EV3 Lego robot. The EV3 Lego robots were programmed by the teams to complete missions in a Lego field. Each mission in the Lego field was worth a certain number of points that the team would receive if they completed that particular mission. One team from HMS, SonicBOOM, took home the gold for earning the most points in the Lego field.