Championship First Place Award went to the Block Busters, a Hood River neighborhood team. For a free slideshow of this event, visit columbiagorgenews.com. Contributed photo
Championship First Place Award went to the Block Busters, a Hood River neighborhood team. For a free slideshow of this event, visit columbiagorgenews.com. Contributed photo
THE GORGE — On Dec. 6, Hood River A05 FRC Team hosted the First Lego League Robotics Qualifying Tournament at Hood River Valley High School (HRVHS). Sixteen teams competed to win awards and attain spaces to travel forward to the State FLL Tournament in January.
Eight of those teams had been mentored by the A05 Annex Team throughout the season and were local elementary and middle school FLL teams. All 16 teams competed in Robot Competition matches with robots that they designed and programmed. They also completed an Innovation Project to help solve problems that archaeologists might face, as the season’s theme, Unearthed, was all about Archaeology. Finally, they all showed the Core Values of FLL throughout the tournament and the season.Â
The Champions First Place Award went to team Block Busters, a neighborhood team from Hood River who performed well in all areas of the competition. On the team are Aatto Annala, Esme Spotts, Graeme Spotts, and Kayla Adkins. For their innovation project, the team explored how machine learning could help archaeologists identify artifacts in the field. They built a working prototype by training Google’s Teachable Machine to recognize representative artifacts they created using LEGO. The judges thought they busted through barriers in Archaeology in an innovative way.
The other winners of the day included the Building Bananas, who won the Core Values Award as well as the Robot Performance Award with the high score of 255; the Mex Robotex from Mid Valley Elementary school won the Innovative Project Award for their international education project on artifact recovery; and The Danger Kitty Team from Hood River New School who won the Robot Design Award for their innovative robot.
There were also awards for teams that organizers expect to see more of in the future: Team Wa Co Wally Robotics came from Wallowa Middle School to win the Breakthrough Award; The Restoration Robots from May Street Elementary won Engineering Excellence; The Unearthlings from May Street won the Rising All-Star Award; and the Rockiologists from May Street won the Motivate Award. Coach Pete from Team Hackers at Westside Elementary won the Coach/Mentor award.
Four teams will be advancing from the tournament to the State FLL Competition on Jan. 17, including Team Block Busters, Team Building Bananas, Team Mex Robotex, and Team Danger Kitty.
The tournament and season was sponsored through grants obtained through ORTOP, the Gorge STEM Hub, and some local donors — this event and the season in Hood River could not take place without their generous support.Â
The Hood River County School District provided the space for the competition, aw well as practice and storage spaces for the teams. And Technology Director Todd Hilstad was invaluable in making the tournament run smoothly.
A05 thanks all sponsors and donors as well as all the volunteers — both adult and student — who made the tournament such a great day for Robotics in The Gorge.
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