THERE are 915 million ways to combine six Lego bricks and children all over the world spend a total of five billion hours annually playing with the Danish toy.
Given those facts, it’s a wonder that more than 200 competitors in Ireland’s “First Lego League” aren’t locked for a year inside Galway’s Radisson Hotel.
It took just one fully absorbing day over the weekend to pick the champions – St Gerald’s College, Castlebar, Co Mayo – and the atmosphere had all the tension, excitement and heartbreak of a sports stadium final. The First Lego League (FLL) is an international programme for Lego builders between nine and 16 years which involves designing, building, programming and testing automatons or robots to perform a series of missions.
The contest attracts 140,000 participants from 58 countries, and Ireland has been competing for the last four years, with last year’s winners from Galway’s Coláiste na Coiribe travelling to the global finals in Atlanta, in the US. This year’s national final theme focused on biomedical engineering, with a project entitled “Body Forward” where children had to find new ways to solve or repair injuries or other medical issues.
Michael McAndrew (13), from Moycullen and pupil at Coláiste Éinde in Galway, was competing on a team led by his father Declan and involving his brother Kevin and friends Emmet, Pearce and Daniel Geoghegan.
His grandfather, Joe McAndrew, was competing against his son and grandsons. Leading a team from Lacken Enterprise Centre, Co Mayo, he noted that male/female teams worked best, with girls having the organisation and discipline and boys the creativity. It was also, he said, “a great way for children to learn how to be disappointed”.
The McAndrew/Geoghegan team devised a cover for torn muscles which allowed the tissue to recover, and designed their robot – for the league’s obstacle course – from Lego’s Mindstorms set.
Each team was given a Mindstorms pack, including software for programming the automaton – “but you’ve got to give it back if you don’t enter”, Michael McAndrew explained.
“The project was difficult because we had to go before a panel of judges and then answer questions on it, but the obstacle course is something else,” he said.
For adult observers, the course challenges – ranging from inserting a stent in an artery to separating white and red blood cells with the robot’s light sensor – would have perplexed any minister for health, let alone a junior science counterpart.
Disc jockey Paul Sleem, alias “The Voice”, was master of ceremonies for the day, and the 31 teams came from as far apart as Bandon, Co Cork, Ballisodare, Co Sligo and Bray, Co Wicklow. All shared the same aim – to ensure their robot navigated the obstacle course successfully in two minutes and 30 seconds.