Bowling Green, Ky. - About 100 volunteers are needed to assist with the Kentucky FIRST LEGO League’s robotics competition Jan. 27 at Western Kentucky University.

About 400 children will be on the WKU campus for the state competition. Volunteers (who need to be 16 or older) can choose from a list of jobs including setup/cleanup crews, referees and registration attendants. (The list is available online at http://kyfll.org/Volunteers.html.)

The theme of this year’s event is “Nano Technology,” which calls for teams to research and present robotics technology solutions to help solve mounting problems in nano technology. Teams consist of five to 10 children ages 9-14 along with coaches and mentors.

The WKU event will include a scavenger hunt on the campus and a Junior FIRST LEGO League competition for children ages 6 to 9.

More than 40 teams from Bowling Green, Louisville, Lexington, northern Kentucky, Elizabethtown and Fort Campbell have entered the state competition. The event will begin at 9:30 a.m. Jan. 27 at Diddle Arena and will conclude with an awards ceremony at 4:30 p.m.

In the competition, teams build a robot to perform various tasks as part of the challenge. Teams also are judged on teamwork, research project and technical aspects. Sponsors for the state tournament include Toyota and Kentucky Space Grant Consortium at WKU.

For information about the state competition, contact event coordinator Karla Andrew at (270) 991-5663 or (270) 784-5705 or karla.andrew@wku.edu or assistant coordinator Samantha Carter at (270) 618-0348 or samantha.carter@wku.edu. More information is available online at www.kyfll.org and www.firstlegoleague.org.
Last year about 6,000 teams competed worldwide with about 7,700 teams from 30 countries expected this year.
FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) was founded in 1989 by Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway Human Transporter. FIRST is a multinational non-profit organization, that aspires to transform culture, making science, math, engineering and technology as cool for kids as sports are today.

FIRST and The LEGO Company created the FIRST LEGO League based on their common belief that fun and learning go hand-in-hand, and that an inspired mind can accomplish anything. Each year, children ages 9 to 14 form teams and spend eight weeks working alongside adult mentors to research, design, build and program robots to solve real-world problems using LEGO MINDSTORMS™ technologies and LEGO bricks. The season culminates at high-energy, sports-like tournaments with judges and awards.

The annual challenge brings the reality of science and technology to children on an intimate, hands-on level where they apply engineering and computer programming principles and presentation techniques to devise solutions. Past challenges have focused on the use of robotics technology in planetary research missions and environmental search and rescue operations, in assessing global climate change, in issues dealing with urban planning, and simulating the research objectives of NASA’s historic Mars Exploration Rovers mission.

More WKU news is available at www.wku.edu. If you’d like to receive WKU news via e-mail, send a message to WKUNews@wku.edu.

For information, contact Karla Andrew at (270) 991-5663 or (270) 784-5705.

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