DMC's Chief Technology Officer, Ken Brey, hosted LMS Robotics in our recently expanded Chicago office. This FIRST Lego League team is made up of 6th-8th graders from Lincoln Middle School in Mount Prospect, IL, and has competed for the last 14 years.
The Shrimp Strike Back present to DMCers.
They took the opportunity to hone their technical presentation skills by talking to DMC engineers and other employees about their robot design and programming. They also presented robot competition demonstrations during DMC’s lunch hour and performed their research project presentation.
What is FIRST Lego League?
FIRST Lego League is a hands-on STEM experience that asks participants, "What if you could build a better world? Where would you begin?" Essentially, teams work to program lego robots to complete a series of goals. They use a LabVIEW-like programming tool called Block on competition robots. The competition fosters teamwork, discovery, and innovation.
The force is strong with these students.
Team names change every year based on the theme of their research project. During their visit to DMC, the team name was the Shrimp Strike Back, a reference to Star Wars and to their innovative research project - a shrimp-growing system for space travel.
DMC employees get a close up look at the robots.
Students aged 9-16 compete against each other. There aren't a lot of nine-year-olds, but the competition is unique because students of so many ages directly compete.
The Shrimp Strike Back at Worlds
After winning the Illinois State Hopper Tournament, one of three independent tournaments in Illinois, the Shrimp Strike Back competed at the FIRST Lego League World Championships.
The team gets ready to compete at a competition.
At worlds, the Shrimp Strike Back took 17th place in robot performance for the second year in a row! They also won top honors with a 1st place award for most innovative solution for their system for growing shrimp in space. They and are now the most decorated team in the state of Illinois and in the top 20 programs in the US.
Just check out their awesome record: LMS Robotics has accumulated over 40 state and regional awards with 22 teams advancing to the State Championship. They placed 1st, 2nd or 3rd place at the State Championship six times. They advanced to the International World Championship five times, and have four International World Championship level awards.
What's Next?
The LMS Robotics team hasn't officially selected their team name for this year, but it may be Bio Brick Eight (another Star Wars reference). They will be demonstrating their 2019/2020 robot at Rockwell Automation Fair at McCormick Place on Thursday, Nov. 21st.
Regional competitions are in December of this year, and after seeing them in action, we are excited to follow their progress this season. Learn more about this team of smart students here.
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