What can be more rewarding than competing at the World Festival? Volunteering of course! (Also see team member’s reflection on this experience).

After attending so many regional, State, national and international tournaments, team Landroids decided to contribute back to the FIRST Community as volunteers at the 2010 FIRST LEGO League World Festival, which was held at Atlanta, GA from 4/14/10 to 4/17/10. Working as the FLL team queuers, Chinese translator, and the FLL stand-in team by day; the FTC mentors during breaks and by night; in between, assisted other FLL teams on light sensor calibration issues and helped out as the FTC robot hardware inspectors and FLL field take down, we had a very busy 4-days with very little sleep.  However, seeing the excitements in the teams (especially the first time they walked into the Georgia Dome), the development of  friendship and respect between the fierce competitors, plus a behind the scene peek on how all the volunteers contributed their time, talents and money to organize and orchestrate the events, this volunteering experience has been truly exhilarating and addicting.  We remain in awe of FIRST’s success in promoting science and technology to young people by able to attract the best minds and passion.

While multi-tasking during the World Festival, Landroids’ volunteer queuer had to stand in for the Saudi Arabia team DAS the last minutes for the robot performance rounds.  (We found out later that team DAS had visa issues and had decided to attend the Open European Championship at Turkey instead).  However, with only 15-minutes of advance notice and no practicing opportunity prior and throughout the tournament, Landroids member, Karlin, unzipped the suitcase that was stored under the queuing table, and ran the robot as a one-person team.  Out of 84 teams from 30 countries at the World Festival, Landroids’ robot was the only one that attempted and successfully parked on the bridge.  After observing the robot runs, the FLL Game Designer, Scott Evans commented that this robot has “made his day!”  This was the only robot that took the risks associated with the engineering and time challenges, disregarded the point value, and conquered the bridge mission.  For videos of the robot performance rounds, click video1, video2.