Are 12 year old 7th graders too old to still play with Lego?

Not if you throw in some motors and sensors and ask them to design and program a robot that is capable to master 9 missions along an obstacle course. The "Hillview Robotics" team works enthusiastically with their Legos once a week after school when they meet to discuss their newest ideas for the robot design. They try them right then and there and program the robot to see whether their design can solve the missions. This season "Hillview Robotics" won already the San Francisco Regional Tournament in the category "Robot Performance" and thus qualified for the Northern California Championship. The six team members were extremely excited to meet with 63 other teams on Saturday, 1/20, to compete and decide who would represent Northern California at the FLL World Festival in Atlanta where 104 teams from 38 countries will participate in a 2 ― day celebration of their robot accomplishments.

The tournament turned out to be a long but exciting day for "Hillview Robotics". They participated in three matches with their robot, they presented their research project about "Using Nano Technology to help clean Water", they presented their robot design and their programming work to the judges and they presented to the judges how they work as a team. And in the end they formed an alliance with three other teams to solve the missions with the combined power of four robots. All day long the team would admire other robots and the creativity their designers had shown in solving the same problems they had tackled all season long.

Now that "Hillview Robotics" won 2nd place in Northern California

for their robot design, the team members canīt wait for the beginning of next season to solve new missions with a robot that is build from Legos. So they will continue to play with Legos even as 13 year

old 8th graders.

Congratulations to Arthur Hogan, Daniel Kopisch, Evan Peairs, Jake Berkow, Patrick Reed and Philipp Kopisch for designing the 2nd best robot in Northern California!