Our Kids Bring Home Honors!
Saturday, February 26, 2011 - Our Rock'n Robo Rabbitstook top honors in the 2011 Western MO/KS Regional. Over90 teams and 900+ kids participated in this year's regional competition, held Saturday, February 26th in Lee's Summit, MO.
Our Rockin' Robo Rabbits won First Place in Presentation. This award recognizes the team whose quality research, innovative solutions, efforts sharing with the community and creative presentation best reflect an in-depth understanding of the various scientific disciplines and issues involved with the Project. Judges look for teams who engage all their team members, and who.best demonstrate extraordinary enthusiasm and spirit, exceptional partnership and the utmost respect and support for their teammates and fellow teams. The award demonstrates the team's confidence, energy, strong problem-solving skills and great group dynamics.
The Robo Rabbits were nominated for an international Core Values Award for their extraordinary dedication to engineering and science. This award also heavily emphasizes teamsmanship. The Robo Rabbits have won top honors for five years straight.
"We're super proud of our kids. Some of the kids have been with us for six years and will be going on to high school robotics next year. Some are only five years old. The comraderie, team spirit and amazing dedication to learning is really inspiring." David Sherrick, Chief Technology Officer, Synthesis Solutions and coach for the Rockin' Robo Rabbits.
The FLL Challenge has two components: a research project and robotics missions. This year's research project required FLLteams to identify and solve a biomedical engineering problem. This year, our FLLteams proposed creative solutions including:
- A new device called Script Alert that could save hundreds of thousands of lives each year. It tracks medicines as they enter the home or hospital room and prompts patients and caregivers to dispense the right medicines at the right time.
- A tiny, jewelry-like GPS systemthat sends a signalsa caregiver via a cell phone or email alert when an at-risk patient like atoddler orAlzheimer's patientleaves his/her safe zone.
- A "Floaty Shirt" that could prevent thousands of drownings each year. Itwears like a regular shirt but inflatesand sounds an alarmwhen it comes in contact with water.
Teams are also required to build and program Lego Mindstorm robots to complete ten to fifteen missions in 2.5 minutes or less. To do this, they must plan efficient routes and sequences, climb steep ramps and endure successful crash tests. The teams are judged in five areas: project presentation, robot performance, robot design, programming and teamwork.
Kids in this program do extraordinary things. In the past six months, the kids on our teams:
- Dived deeply into biomedical engineering. They:
- Visited Cerner, ProScript, KUBiomedical Engineering Labs, Children's Mercy Medical Center and a host of other robotics and biomedical engineering companies
- Worked with doctors, pharmacists and professional engineers to develop their ideas into real products
- Presented their ideas to several companies who could help them commercialize their prototypes
- Built ten robots and fielded two successful teams in the Western MO/KS Regional
Watching our kids do amazing things like these makes it easy to see how they will change the world. We are so excited to open a high school team this year; it will be a pleasure to watch these kids grow into successful adults." Rebecca Kidwell, President, LEARN Science & Math Club
More than 17,000 teams and 170,000 kids from 50+ countries participate in FLL worldwide.