To the Editor:

We are three students from Westborough: Nilay McLaren, Alexey Khotimsky and Stav Zeliger. We go to Mill Pond School, and take robotics at the S.E.T. School.

Last Saturday, we took part in the FIRST LEGO League regional competition in Shrewsbury.

FIRST LEGO League (FLL) is a competition that has three parts. The robot game, the project, and core values. The robot game is where you design and program an autonomous robot made of LEGO to complete missions on a 4’ x 8’ table. For the project, the teams conduct research related the year’s topic,identify a real life problem, and come up with a unique innovative solution. This year’s topic was “Senior Solutions.” The teams had to find creative solutions to help seniors with problems they face in daily lives. Teams have to demonstrate good teamwork throughout the entire season.

Our teams “Angry Owls” and “Hackerz” have been working since mid-August on the robot design andpreparing our project presentations.

Dec. 1 was the big day. We arrived at the competition early in the morning. Each team competed in five rounds. During each round, the robot has 2.5 minutes to complete as many missions as possible. Teammates take turns running the robot and changing the attachments. All teams also participate in three judging sessions, where the students meet with the panel of judges (without coaches or parents). The judging sessions include core values, robot design, and poject.

Both the “Hackerz” and “The Angry Owls” ranked high and will participate in the Massachusetts State FLL competition at WPI in Worcester on Dec. 15. Even better, “Angry Owls” team won first place in the elimination rounds and got the Mechanical Design Award. “Hackerz” placed fourth, and were the top ranked rookie team. Many thanks to our FLL coaches, both of whom are moms from Westborough.

Stav Zeliger

Nilay McLaren

Alexey Khotimsky