November 11, 2011

CBU Hosts FIRST Lego League of the Mid Season Summit



Students in grades 4 through 8 from Ira Samelson Boys and Girls Club and St Francis of Assisi Catholic School  participate in the FIRST Lego League Mid Season Summit sponsored by Christian Brothers University’s School of Engineering and The Memphis Chapter of the Tennessee Society of Professional Engineers.

Memphis- Christian Brothers University’s School of Engineering and The Memphis Chapter of the Tennessee Society of Professional Engineers hosted the FIRST Lego League Mid Season Summit on Saturday, October 29th.

FIRST Lego League is an annual international competition which involves programming an autonomous robot to accomplish missions on a four foot by eight foot competition field.  Teams of up to 10 students in grades 4 through 8 have two and one half minutes to accomplish as many missions as they can.  The robots navigate the field by either following a wall, following a line or moving a number of wheel rotations.

The goal for the Mid Season Summit was to have everyone who attended to be able to write and execute a program that would direct the Lego Mindstorm robot to utilize its light sensor to follow a line. To accomplish this, eight CBU students studied the software before the event and assisted the elementary students with using the software to write the line following program.
 
Participants at the event included members and coaches from 8456 Team Navy (Ira Samelson Boys and Girls Club) and Team 7920 RoboWolves (St. Francis of Assisi Catholic School).  The teams quickly picked up on the logic and started making modifications to the program for utilization in this year's robot competition.

Currently, there are nine registered FIRST Lego League teams in the Memphis area.  The teams are preparing for two competitions to be held in December. A local competition will be held December 3, 2011 and the state competition will be December 10, 2011. 

For more information about CBU School of Engineering, email, engineering@cbu.edu  or call (901) 321-3405. To learn more about FIRST Lego League, visit www.firstlegoleague.org. ###