Robotics team set for qualifying tournament in Olathe

The CowTown ThrowDown Rumble this past Saturday at Lee’s Summit High School was the first opportunity for the Bates County Robotics team known as Brick Heads 194 to participate in a First Robotics Lego League (FLL) event. The team made up of youth from the Adrian, Butler, and Archie area has been preparing for this year’s challenge over the summer. FLL is for nine to fourteen year olds and has been active for twenty years.

This year’s challenge is Senior Solutions and is made up of problems encountered by seniors in their day to day life. The challenge is to help senior adults remain active, engaged, and independent. Specifically each team member is to find a senior partner aged sixty years or more and learn things the partner could use help in doing, then develop a plan for using robotics to help accomplish in doing them. This is called the Project which really is the most important part of the challenge, but the Robot Games do generate the most excitement.

  The Robot Games are a group of problems set up on a four foot by eight foot arena. The team has been working to build and program their robot to solve and complete as many of the problems as possible in two and one-half minutes. The robots are a Lego product called NXT Mindstorms and come as a kit with many Lego type parts and a controller sometimes called the “Brick” from which the team got its’ name. The 194 is the registration number which came with the registration last May; with the registration period closing in September there are over 13,000 teams worldwide. The Rumble was a “fun” competition of fourteen teams mostly from the Kansas City area.

The Brick Heads will be going to Olathe NW High School November 17 for its’ qualifying tournament where forty teams will be competing for ten places to move up to the Kansas City Regional Tournament January 19 at Union Station. The last FLL event of the season will be the International at Edward Jones Dome in St Louis next April. This being the teams first year; just competing is quite a thrill, but the team scored well at the Rumble and is working hard to compete in the Qualifier in two weeks.

Pictured are the Brick Heads – 194 members who competed last Saturday at the CowTown ThrowDown Rumble. Left to right Kaitlyn Hollingshead, Aubrie Oates, Clint Cumpton, Isaiah Salazar, Clay Cumpton, and Domanic Johnson

-our thanks to Jerry Ferguson