FIRST FLL Newton Busters wins 2 trophies at regional

For 5 of the students on the team, this year was a dream year for the Newton Busters to win two trophies at regional as rookies. At Chicago’s ITW David Speer Academy, a new state of the art school that opened last year, 16 teams gathered December 13, 2016 to demonstrate their robot skills along with research presentations and teamwork skills. The Newton Busters scored 662 points on the mission table, winning the Robot Design trophy and the Robot Performance trophy at the regional.

Every year, FLL has 3 components – robot, research, and teamwork. This year, the TRASH TREK Challenge asks teams to explore the hidden but fascinating world of trash, from collection, to sorting, to smart production, and reuse. They must also invent a solution to help our trash problem and create their own LEGO MINDSTORMS® robot to accomplish trash-themed “missions” on a playing field, and show how well they practice FIRST LEGO League Core Values.

For their research project, the team spoke to Julie Cahillane, Manager of Sustainability and Resource Management at Northwestern, to share an innovative solution on how to reduce plastics. The Newton Busters team studied the waste that is created from 3D printed objects which is made with 3D printer filament, which is a growing material of choice for designing prototypes and even making sellable products. 3D printers are common in high schools as well as retail and industrial sectors. As Ms. Cahillane pointed out, there is no current recycling waste stream for ABS and PLA, two common materials used in 3D printing. The Newton Busters envision a 3D printer filament recycling center where end users could send their 3D filament waste. In return, the recycling company could tally monetary credit that people could use to buy 3D recycled filament from the recycling company. The filament would be sorted by color so the recycled 3D filament could be offered in a multitude of colors.

The Newton Busters has 6 members, ranging from 3rd grade to 7th grade – Ben Wu, Madison Liu, Caden Liu, Noah Zheng, Hayden Fountain, and Gavin Fountain. Gavin Fountain is the 7th grader who is the only return member from last year, who also travelled last season in the summer of 2015 to the Asian Pacific Open Championship in Australia to compete against 44 other teams from around the world. In Australia, the Newton Busters won the Gracious Professionalism trophy.

FIRST FLL has 29,000 teams globally, representing 80 countries. The program is designed for children of the age 9 to 16, depending on the country, with opportunities to not only compete around the world, but to learn about different cultures. FIRST coined the terms “Gracious Professionalism” and “Coopertition,” which embody the core values of the FIRST programs, founded by Dean Kamen, also inventor of the segway and IBOT mobility system (advanced wheel chair).

The upcoming FIRST FLL World Festival will be held April 27-30, 2016 in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. The event is open to the public for free.