Elementary Students Earn Top Awards at Robotics Competition

A team of RSD elementary students may be helping chart the future of robotics, logistics and how you get that item you ordered online.

Intelligent Mademoiselles, which has student team members from Lewis & Clark, Orchard and White Bluffs elementary schools, placed in the top 3 last weekend at the Eastern Washington FIRST LEGO League Robotics Regional Tournament in Royal City. Two other RSD student teams also competed, the Happy Campers from Chief Joseph Middle School, Three River's HomeLink and homeschooled students and Blueberry Pi from Leona Libby Middle School and homeschooled students.

The Intelligent Mademoiselles competed against 16 other Eastern Washington teams and took home awards for Core Values and Global Innovation. Their placement in the top 3 qualifies them to for the state competition held at Amazon headquarters in Seattle in early February. 

The team’s research project particularly impressed judges and scientists, which earned them the award for Global Innovation. They presented their solutions for early detection of oil spills and prevention of cyber-attacks on pipelines. 

The theme of this year’s competition was Cargo Connect. Teams were challenged to build a robot to deliver cargo to different forms of transportation or locations around the field. The areas of competition included an innovation project, robot design, core values and actual robot games.

The team has been working on their project since August. Members included Lucy Cramer (grade 5), Armelle Bonneville (grade 5), Aditri Prasad (grade 5) and Bianca Zink (grade 4) from Lewis and Clark Elementary; Samviti Prasad (grade 5) from Orchard Elementary and Kaitlyn Gibson (grade 3) from White Bluffs Elementary. It is estimated each student as spent at least 60 works working on this project. Team coaches were Nick and Carolyn Cramer, scientists from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

FIRST LEGO League Challenge is one of three divisions by age group of the FIRST LEGO League program. This program inspires young people to experiment and grow their confidence, critical, thinking, and design skills through hands-on STEM learning. Learn more at firstwa.org.