Delaware State University was once again the site of the 2023 FIRST Lego League Delaware State Championship on March 18, a robotic competition between 10 teams mostly from Delaware, but also from Maryland and Pennsylvania.
In the robotic competition, the 10 teams of students – from grade 4-8 – competed in presentations that demonstrated core values, robot design, and an innovation project. Held in the parlors of the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Center on campus, the competitors were judged by how their teams demonstrated FIRST’s Core Value of Discovery, Innovation, Impact, Inclusion, Teamwork and Fun.
The 1st Place award went to the Load Robotics team from Chesapeake, Md. The 2nd and 3rd place awards went to the S2STEM team of Garnet Valley, Pa., and The Mind MONCS of the First State Robotics Club in Newark, Del., respectively.
“In this year’s game, called ‘SUPERPOWERED’, teams and their robots must accomplish tasks related to power and energy,” said Dr. Matthew Bobrowsky, a DSU Associate Professor in Dept. of Physics, Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science, who was the primary coordinator of the competition. “This is about recognzing and overcoming barriers and then inventing creative solutions. We look at how well teams work together and accomplish various energy-related tasks in a race against time.”
The FIRST Program is an international non-profit program that prepares young people for the future through a suite of inclusive, team-based robotics programs facilitated in schools or in afterschool programs for ages 4-18.
Photo caption: The LOAD Robotics Team members – (l-r) Josephine Morton, David Morton, and Annette Morton – hold the 1st place FIRST Lego League Delaware State Championship trophy, as well as pictures of two team members who could not attend the competition.
