THE ROLLA REGIONAL ROBOTICS TEAMS GO TO ARKANSAS

. . . and win ! ! We took three teams down to Mountain Home, Arkansas the first weekend in December for the FIRST Lego League's Regional Competition. Almost 40 teams competed in the "Body Forward" competition, which combined research about biomedical applications for robotics, presentations about that research, and programming and building a robot which would autonomously accomplish up to 16 different tasks during a 2 1/2 minute round. The "Green Team" won the single elimination tournament with the highest score of any team the entire day. Here they are with one of two trophies they received: Cordell Williams, Maggie Quakkelaar, Joy Nisbett, Devin Pittman, Anna Nisbett, Eva Quakkelaar, Jeremy Hanson (in back), and Kyle Quittschreiber (not pictured, who was meeting his new siblings adopted from Russia that day.)

Joy and Maggie during the last round of competition.

All the contestants from Rolla, during YMCA, which was a fun and tension releasing activity right before the final round of competition for the championship.

Part of the Red Team's presentation material.

John and Zeke, from the Blue Team, watching the Gremlin once again do strange things to their robot. It as a very disappointing day for them, as their robot had the potential to score 360 points (100 points over any score there that day), but kept having unexplained issues (I think maybe their robot was a female.)

The Blue Team waits for their next round. The Blue Team included:
John Nisbett, Gabe Quakkelaar, Zeke Hall, Peter Cook, Jonathan Cureton, and Mikayla Pittman, Kyle Pittman, Adler Davidson

Nathanael and Zach run a round. After the first seeding round, these little guys were in second place overall, and did very well. They were put out when one of the cords connecting the "brain" with the rest of the robot came loose. Nathanael diagnosed and fixed it on the spot, but they lost too much time to recover.

The red team included: Nathanael Nisbett, Zach Filla, Erik Davidson, Marcus Bauer, Ryan Williams, Malachai Quakkelaar, Nathan Widener, Tristan Hanson, and Cade Quittschreiber (who was also unable to attend since he was with his new Russian siblings.)