Robotics...

My sons are involved in a program called Block Robotics Learning. It is run by a very determined woman named Sally Mancini. This lady puts hundreds of hours into teaching children how to work with robots.

They mainly work with Lego Mindstorms and Lego NXT although this last year or two have seen them branch out into VEX robots and a new robot out of Lawrence Tech University. LTU runs a Robofest competition in the spring, under the guidance of Dr. CJ Chung. An amazing man with a vision.

During the year the kids are involved in many projects and competitions. They start the year with First Lego League competition. With a competition in our area in December, the winners head on to the next competition in Toronto or Flint, MI. Then if they are really good they head off to Atlanta for the world finals in the spring. We always are in the 4 or5 teams that make it to Flint or Toronto and we have even been to Atlanta once or twice.

During this time LTU has introduced a Thanksgiving day Robot parade. You can see a video on the Robofest site. Also added this year from LTU was a robot fashion parade and RoboSumo. In the spring some of the seniors head on to VEX competitions and the rest head on to Robofest for the game challenge. The kids compete at locale competitions then move on to the world Robofest at LTU. Kids show up from all over the USA, Canada, Korea and Singapore.

They can be there for the Robofest game, the Exhibition, RoboSumo, Vex Pentathlon, RoboFashionShow and a couple of other things. We had several teams make it to the world finals. My own kids were involved in the Exhibition, the RoboFashionShow and the RoboSumo.

William came home with first place in the Jr. RoboSumo! That's World finals!