The robotics team hosted the fifth annual First Lego League Boro Blast Saturday as 18 teams competed.

The 2011 FLL Challenge at the Boro Blast is called "Food Factor." The teams must explore the topic of food safety and examine the possible points of contamination of food encounters—from exposure to insects and creatures, to unsterile processing and transportation, to unsanitary preparation and storage—then find ways to prevent or combat these contaminates. 

In the Food Factor Challenge, teams will build, test and program their autonomous robot to solve a set of Food Safety missions as well as research, develop and share their innovative food safety solutions.

Among those competing were four teams of Hillsborough intermediate and middle school students. The Hillsborough Brickmasters won the award for best Robot Performance, scoring the most points during the robot game for the second year in a row. The Hillsborough Germinators won the Inspiration award for enthusiasm and spirit. The Hillsborough Robo-Einsteins won the Mechanical Design award.

First Lego League (FLL) is a robotics program for 9- to 14-year-olds designed to get children excited about science and technology. FLL is a global organization with teams and organizations in 61 countries. Teams are composed of up to 10 children with at least one adult coach. In FLL, the children do the work programming an autonomous robot to score points on a thematic playing surface, according to its website.

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