LEGO
Introduction
All members in our club start off with LEGO when they first enter. The simplicity and ease of learning LEGO helps to drill fundamental robotics concepts, which would serve as a stepping stone for our members to move towards more complex robotic systems like VEX.
We participate in 2 LEGO competitions, the National Robotics Competition (NRC) and the FIRST LEGO League (FLL).
National Robotics Competition
An annual competition in Singapore that serves as qualifiers for the World Robot Olympiad (WRO)
FIRST LEGO League
A competition where robots have to solve different missions across the field, often with many interactive field elements
National Robotics Competition
Introduction
Our club participates in the annual National Robotics Competition (NRC, or formerly known as NJRC a few years back), which serves as the national qualifiers to select teams to represent Singapore at the World Robot Olympiad (WRO). Our club typically participates in the Regular category in both Junior (HS students) and Senior (JC students) age groups.
The Regular Category is a challenge based competition. Students must design, construct and program their robots to solve specific challenges on a field in 120 seconds. Points are scored for completed tasks.
Background
The first edition of WRO was launched here in Singapore way back in 2004 and for as long as we can remember, our club has been sending teams to NRC in an attempt to qualify for WRO every year. However, 2011 and 2016 were the only years where we earned the opportunity to represent Singapore in WRO, which was held in UAE and India respectively. 2017 marked the first time that JC members sent teams to participate in NRC in the senior category.
Looking Forward
We have consistently received satisfactory results in NRC throughout the years. Despite branching out more into other non-LEGO competitions, our teams are still doing fairly well, with more than half the teams making it into the finals (top 10/20 finish) in 2019. Nonetheless, we are optimistic that we can reach greater heights in NRC, with the ultimate goal being winning the overall championship award.
FIRST LEGO League
Intro
Much like WRO, FIRST LEGO League (FLL) is a mission-based competition that changes yearly, but on a more mechanically complex scale.
FLL presents multiple missions for robots to tackle, often involving interactive field elements. Successful completion of a specific mission awards points. However, teams are allowed to change robot attachments in the starting base an unlimited number of times throughout the 150 second run time, which incorporates the need to strategise which mission to prioritise in order to score the maximum number of points within the time limit.
Teams will also have to conduct presentations that demonstrate the FLL core values such as research and community outreach etc., which will be counted towards the final overall rankings.
Background
We have been participating in FLL since its launch here in Singapore as well. Similar to NRC, we have been performing relatively well and bagged many awards throughout the years, but would lose out to traditional powerhouses and fall just short of winning overall champions.
Our participation gradually became irregular due to the huge amounts of LEGO parts that had to be diverted away for NRC preparation. Members were also generally more interested in VEX or RoboCup and thus, we took a hiatus from 2017 onwards.
In 2019, we took a gamble and decided to send a team in order to train some junior members in LEGO fundamentals and allow them to gain more competition experience.
The team worked tirelessly and, against all odds, won Overall Champions at FLL Singapore.
Despite the fact that most members were also involved in other competitions such as RoboCup and VEX at the same time, the team decided to push on and represent Singapore at the First LEGO League Festival held in Detroit, the United States, barely a month later with completely redesigned robot attachments.
Looking Forward
While there are no immediate plans to participate in FLL again in 2021, we hope that our 2019 run can inspire future batches to try their hand at something new and perhaps ‘revive’ our participation in FLL some day.
Achievements
Despite facing numerous disruptions and having to work from home due to the COVID-19 situation, our teams persevered and managed to attain commendable results. For the first time, all of our senior teams made it into the top 10.
Awards won (Senior Category):
- 1st Best Presentation
- 2nd Best Engineering
- 2nd Best Content
Awards won (Junior Category):
- 1st Best Content
- 3rd Best Teamwork
For this year, we had 5/9 teams that successfully qualified for the finals, which places them in the top 10 or 20 according to category. 1 senior team also swept 3 awards, including 3rd overall.
Awards won (Senior category):
- 3rd Overall Championship Award
- 1st Best Content
- 2nd Best Programming
- 3rd Best Presentation
Awards won (Junior Category):
- 1st Best Programming
- 1st Best Content
We represented Singapore at the FLL World Festival held in Detroit, USA!
We decided to revive our participation in FLL to train some junior members in LEGO. Much to our surprise, we emerged as overall champions.
Awards won:
- Grand Champion
- 2nd Best Robot Performance
- 1st Mechanical Design
Unfortunately, only 1 junior team made it to the NRC finals this year but they managed to sweep 4 awards.
Awards won (Junior Category):
- 3rd Overall Championship Award
- 2nd Best Programming
- 2nd Best Content
- 3rd Best Engineering
Awards won (Junior Category):
- 2nd Overall Championship Award
- 4th Robot Performance Award
- 1st Best Research
- 1st Best Programming
- 3rd Best Mechanical
- Overall Champions
