A team of 4 students from R. J. Grey Junior High, Acton MA, competed at the Massachusetts First Lego League (FLL) State Championships on Dec 19th and came in 2nd. The Robonauts - Rohan Chakravarthy, Niranjan Narasimhan, Pratik Bharadwaj and Rahul Ulman - all 8th Grade students, qualified to represent Massachusetts at the FLL North American Open Championships at LegoLand in San Diego, CA in May 2016.

The competition started with regional level tournaments, with a total of 425 teams in Massachusetts. 84 teams qualified for the State level championships, which was held at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute yesterday. The competition had 4 parts - 

- a robotics game, where a robot they built and programmed had to complete a variety of tasks autonomously. They built a compact robot using Lego pieces that performed consistently at the championship

- a project centered on the theme for this year - Trash Trek. The boys had to come up with a way to improve how we handle trash (collection, disposal, recycling, reuse or reduce). They came up with a great idea on how to motivate people to recycle more - specifically plastic bottles. This included a smart trash can, and a mobile app that runs on smartphones that gamifies the concept of recycling. They shared their idea in the Acton community - Corey York at the Acton Transfer Station, and Carolyn Dann at the Mass DEP. They will also be presenting their idea to the Green Acton team in Feb/March to see how their concept can be used in Acton.

- robot design, where they had to excel at designing a consistently performing robot

- a "core values" challenge that focused on teamwork, respect for others, gracious professionalism and co-opertition (friendly competition).

The boys had great fun over the last three months preparing for and competing at the tournaments. They learnt a lot through the journey, and are delighted to represent Massachusetts at the national tournament.