Hugotron Cyber Squids Win Southwest Region First Lego League Championship

Several teams from Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado and Texas met at the Seward County Activity Center in Liberal Saturday, March 1, to compete in the Annual Southwest Region First Lego League Championship. Among those were teams from nearby Hugoton and area towns of Hooker, Okla., and Vilas, Colo.

The event, hosted by the Liberal Recreation Department, saw the teams making presentations before a panel of judges. Each of the teams had a booth at the event where they could make all adjustments needed to ensure their robots functioned as expected. Teams utilized practice tables to run their robots through exercises to prepare them for the table competitions which took place that afternoon.

Each year there is a theme for the teams to work from. Theme for Saturday's event was "Submerged Challenge". Team members were to "imagine and come up with innovative new ways to create solutions on the ocean floor".

Each team competed in four categories: Innovation, Robot Design, Core Values, and Robot Performance.

An awards ceremony took place at the end of the afternoon and found the Hugoton, Kan., high school team - the Hugotron Cyber Squids taking home the overall championship trophy. They now qualify to travel to Daytona Beach, Fla., in June to compete in the First Lego League Florida Sunshine Invitational.

The Hugotron Cyber Squids also placed first in Robot Design and first in Core Values.

Another Hugoton team, the Hugotron Sea Eagles, took home second place in Innovation and second place in Core Values.

Hooker, Okla., had four teams competing in the event: the Lego Dinos, Teal Techno Titans, Aqua Builders, and the Robotic Crabs.

Awards received by the Hooker teams were: Lego Dinos, third place in Core Values; and Teal Techno Titans, third place, Robot Design. Three of the Hooker teams swept the Robot Performance division with first place going to Robotic Crabs with 285 points; second place, Teal Techno Titans, 200 points; and third place, Aqua Builders, 185 points.

A team from Vilas, Colo., Robo Warriors, took home first place in  the Innovation category.

Other winners were: the Blue Barracudas, third place in Innovation; and the Bubble Team, second place, Robot Design.

Teams have several criteria to follow for each of the categories in the competition. For instance, in core values, the award recognizes teams who display extraordinary enthusiasm, who realizes they can accomplish more together than as individuals, and shows each other and other teams respect at all times.

For the innovation project award teams are judged based on "utilizing diverse resources to help them gain a comprehensive understanding of the problem they identified; develop a creative, well researched solution; and effectively communicate their findings to the judges and the community.

Robot designs are judged on the utilization of outstanding programming principles, and solid engineering practices in order to develop a robot that is mechanically sound, durable, efficient, and highly capable of performing challenging missions.

Competitors also stated they are judged on other criteria including how many times they have to pickup their robots during the competition in order to get them operating correctly, and if they do not remember to sign the judges sheet at the end of the competition, they go back down to zero points.

First Lego League Florida Sunshine Invitational in Daytona Beach, Florida will take place June 24-28.