Sunday, December 07, 2003

By Donald I. Hammonds, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Parents everywhere know about LEGOs.

They're the colorful building blocks that can be found under kids' beds, between sofa cushions, in the dog's food dish -- and, of course, under your unsuspecting foot on the living room floor.

But those same little blocks that end up in the funniest places just might be the start of something big -- like a career in robotics, engineering, or some other lucrative career.

Just ask any of the more than 1,000 9- to 14-year-olds from all over the region who competed in the fourth annual FIRST LEGO League Robotics Competition yesterday, held for middle-school students at Carnegie Mellon University's National Robotics Engineering Consortium building in Lawrenceville. They all started out the same way.

"I just remember I liked to build castles and stuff. But my little sister would step on them. I would build them and she would knock them down," laughed Tory Larson of Penn Hills, a 10-year-old whose team was named "The Army of the Lord."

Robert Williamson, 12, a seventh-grader at Sterrett Classical Academy in Point Breeze, recalled his early LEGO days, too.

"I just wanted to keep on building and exploring and seeing what I could make," he said. "I started when I was about 6, making cars, houses, airplanes -- just anything."

And now? He's on his way to achieving his dream of becoming an architect. "That's why I'm here. I always wanted to be an architect, and this event helps me learn about designing all kinds of stuff."

For John O'Neill, 12, who also attends Sterrett, yesterday's event taught him a lot of other useful things.

"It teaches cooperation, teamwork, and how to enhance your imagination, discovering your own ideas."

The teams had nine weeks to build their robots. As part of the competition, the robots are supposed to be able to complete eight different "missions," or tasks. The robots have a variety of attachments built on to them to complete those missions.

The students put their programmed robots to the test against the clock on tables made up to look like a Martian landscape -- this year's competition theme.

Robots of all shapes and forms, all made of LEGO components, completed all kinds of tasks -- picking up balls, climbing over obstacles, going up and down ramps. And there were plenty of other kids, relatives, teachers and team coaches around to cheer everybody on.

Of course, as much fun as the competition was, there were some pretty serious reasons for having it, said Robin Shoop, outreach director at the robotics consortium.

"Children today have such a steep hill to climb when it comes to technological literacy. The sooner we can engage children in math and science, and the sooner we can excite them about science and math applications, the better," he said.

By participating in the competition, he said, children learn a variety of things.

"They learn about resource management, resource allocation, systems, working in teams and problem solving," he said.

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