Members of the Cornelius Elementary Robotics Team at FIRST Lego League State Championship.
Back row: Mrs.Warren, Katherine Chou, Alexis Admire, Eloise Bissette, Liam Bredeson, Mr.Rosebrook
Front row: Keegan Bamford, Kaya Dickens, Zoey Hart, Anthony Gautier, Nora Tobias, Yahya Khan

Jan. 30. Cornelius Elementary’s Robotics team brought home a trophy from the NC FIRST Lego League (FLL) Challenge State Championship. The team placed fourth in Core Values, and ranked 10th in Robot Run out of 90 qualifying teams. Teams are scored at the competition based on their robot run performance, their research project and their presentation and awards are presented to the top four teams in five categories: Champion’s, Core Values, Innovation Project, Robot Design and Robot Performance.

Cornelius was awarded the Judge’s Award in a NC FIRST Lego League (FLL) Challenge qualifying tournament held at Olympic High School in Charlotte last November, and scored high enough to advance to the State Championship, which was held at North Carolina A&T University in Greensboro.

Background

FLL offers project-based, hands-on STEM programs to introduce students to engineering and coding through an annual robotics challenge centered around a yearly theme. This year’s theme is Energy. The students designed, built and coded a Lego robot to complete specific tasks at the tournament. They also created a research project and presentation on sustainable energy. The CES team’s project focused on solar sidewalks.

The Cornelius Elementary School’s team is comprised of 4th and 5th grade students, and overseen by CES teachers Brian Rosebrook and Anna Warren.

—Jillian Tobias