FSU to Host 2014 FIRST LEGO League State Championship Robotics Tournament

The Fairmont State University College of Science and Technology will host the West Virginia FIRST® LEGO® League (FLL) State Championship robotics tournament on Saturday, Dec. 6.

The event will take place at the Falcon Center and will be open to the public from 1 to 5 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 6. More than 1,000 people from across the state, including 46 student teams, are expected to attend.

FIRST® LEGO® League (FLL) is an international robotics program that allows teams of young people, ages 9 to 14, to assemble and compete with robots that are designed to accomplish tasks associated with a real-world “Challenge.” In the 2014 World Class Challenge, children from more than 80 countries will identify a problem, create an innovative solution and share their research when they answer the question: “How could we improve the way someone learns…”

The number of teams in West Virginia increased from 68 in 2013 to 102 this year necessitating Regional Qualifiers for the first time in the state’s history as the growth of the FLL robotics STEM challenge continues to expand. Teams competed in one of five qualifying tournaments in the month of November. Sites include WVU Jackson’s Mill 4-H Camp, BridgeValley Community and Technical College, Shepherd University, West Virginia University and the Robert C. Byrd Institute at Marshall University.

During the event on Saturday, the public will be able to view innovative solutions to the Jr. FLL challenge Think Tank for ages 6-9. They will demonstrate through LEGOs how to solve real-world problems that relate to the field of education and present posters showing what they have learned during their project. Teams from FIRST® Tech Challenge and FIRST® Robotics Competition will be on hand to demonstrate the types of robots that the FLL students can advance to build and compete with in FTC and FRC competitions.

Sponsors of this year’s challenge are the NASA WV Space Grant Consortium, the Bharti Family and NASA’s IV&V Robotics Alliance Project.

A complete list of the teams who placed at the Qualifiers and a list of the 46 teams moving onto the State Championship can be found on the West Virginia FIRST® LEGO® League page on Facebook.

West Virginia FIRST LEGO League robotics TournamentFalcon CenterCollege of Science and Technology