On January 18, Peterborough based Whirlpool UK Appliances Limited, parent company to KitchenAid, Whirlpool, Hotpoint and Indesit, hosted its first ever IET FIRST LEGO League tournament, bringing together nine teams from local primary schools to take part in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) competition.
Following months of preparation, almost 100 local primary school children from Peterborough and Huntingdon communities gathered to take part in the tournament and develop their STEM skills through a series of project-based, robotics and teamwork-led challenges. Team The Planters from Huntingdon Primary School was presented with the Champions’ Award and will now progress to the IET FIRST LEGO League England and Wales Final, taking place in Bristol on February 22.
FIRST LEGO League is a global science and technology challenge, for students aged nine to 16, which sees over 310,000 young people (in 38,800 teams), from across 100 countries, come together to develop their STEM skills. Through its new regional tournament and sponsorship, Whirlpool UK Appliances Ltd has been able to fund ten teams from local schools to participate.
Over the past five months, teams have been working together to build and programme autonomous robots, using a LEGO MINDSTORMS kit. During the Robot Game strand of the competition, the pressure was on as teams were tasked with using their robots to complete as many missions as possible on the themed LEGO playing field, in a time-limit of just 2.5 minutes. The team that scored the most points and that was awarded the Robot Game prize was Rowan’s Robots from Kimbolton Primary Academy.
As well as being judged on their robot’s performance, teams were also assessed on the thought process behind their robot’s design and their programming skills. The Robot Design prize was awarded to team NHA SuBob from Newark Hill Academy.
