Robotics, Teamwork and World Hunger

North Star Academy was the scene of the First Lego League (FLL) Robotics Tournament Saturday as 12 teams from throughout the Bay Area competed for the chance to advance to the Northern California Peninsula Championship Tournament.

The theme of this year's tournament was "Food Factor," and it tasked the participating sixth, seventh and eighth graders with posing a real-world problem related to food - contamination, say, or delivery - then developing a solution, which the students then presented to judges.

The tournament presented two other challenges: Robot design and “core values,” the ability to work cooperatively.

North Star entered two teams, a middle-school and an elementary.