The robotics team (made up of fourth- through eighth-graders) from the Martin Luther King Jr. Literary and Fine Arts School was practicing one last time on Tuesday night before heading to the Illinois State Finals in Elgin, where the group will compete alongside 56 other teams. Two winning teams from Illinois will advance to the world championship in Houston later this year.
The King Arts team has been together since kindergarten, and along the way learned a lot about engineering, robotics, programming and, most importantly, teamwork.
Since August 2024, the team has been working four hours a week on the current project about a dive robot and practicing running a separate Lego robot on the official tournament table.
There are four equal parts to the competition:
- Robot mission score
- Robot design (presentation)
- Innovation project (presentation)
- Core values of teamwork, innovation, inclusion, discovery, impact and fun
For its innovation project, the team interviewed scientists to solve a real-world problem with the ocean that will help divers explore shipwrecks more efficiently. Their proposal is the Circumnavigational Innovative Remote Controlled LiDAR Explorer (CIRCLE). LiDAR stands for light detection and ranging, which is a scanning tool used to create 3D models of the Earth’s surface.
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