Lego team wins robot design award

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The Battery-Powered Picklejar Heads

By Maggie A. Pax/Special to the Minuteman

Lexington -

Seven months ago, a team of Lexington teens started building a robot. Last week that robot won second place for “Quality Design” at the FIRST Lego League World Festival robotics competition held in Atlanta, Ga.

“In order to get to the champion level, you have to be seriously dedicated,” said Jenny Ramseyer, 16, a member of the “Battery-Powered Picklejar Heads” team from Lexington. “In September, we started putting in sometimes eight hours a week to make this happen — even more during the preparations for the championship.”

Since its founding 18 years ago, the FIRST robotics competition has brought together teams from all over the world for the championship competition.

After winning in a series of regional competitions, the teams face off in the 70,000-seat Georgia Dome, demonstrating prowess in a number of robot-executed missions.

Competition lasts two days with 84 teams competing from all around the world.

This year teams traveled to Atlanta from as far away as Singapore, Denmark, Brazil and 20 other countries.

“Initially in the fall the team didn’t know what they were up against,” said Kevin Oye, one of the team coaches. “But winning the regional and state competitions actually gave them more of an incentive to try harder. By that time they had also completely redesigned the robot and were executing new missions.

“Competition actually sharpened the team and made them step up the energy level,” he added.

During the process, the team realized that “tweaking their current design was not going to be good enough.,” said Paul Perry, another Picklejar Heads coach. “They had to give up on that approach and try a whole new design. That was hard for them to do, initially.”

But that new modular design proved to be the one that earned them the award in Atlanta.

The FIRST robotics competitions are designed to foster interest in engineering and science among teenagers.

For the Battery- Powered Picklejar Heads, it was hard work, but it was also fun.

“Going to the championship was so satisfying, and building robots with your friends every week was really fun. Once something works, you’re really happy,” said Ramseyer.