The UK & Ireland Final of the Climate Connections Challenge was held at Loughborough University on 24 January. There was a tremendous spirit throughout the day as teams enthusiastically competed for the coveted awards. For the first time, we were delighted to welcome teams from Scotland and N. Ireland.
The extra space offered by the Final’s new venue was welcomed by the 24 teams and spectators and it also allowed the teams to display their research materials in a much larger team pit area.
This year’s Robot Performance game had proved demanding for most teams throughout the Climate Connections season but at the Final one team – Technobotts 3 - dominated throughout the rounds all the way through to the final match, achieving a perfect 400 score along the way.
The Research Project required teams to investigate how climate affects their own community and the judges were very impressed with both the quality of the research and the creativity of the team presentations. The award winners were Tech HEds.
Teamwork is the foundation upon which success is achieved and is valued highly within FLL. The judges interviewed all the teams and decided that S.R.T. Smart Robotic Technologies were worthy winners of this award. In a closely related category, the Ford award for Team Spirit on-the-day went to Cleadon Climate Connectors.
Teams were also evaluated on the technical aspects of their robot, with judges asking questions about the robot design and the programming used to accomplish the game missions. The winners of this award were KES1.
With all the judging completed, teams were presented with their FLL medals and the scores from each team’s performance in all 4 categories were used to decide the overall FLL Champion Award winner – congratulations to Technobotts 3. The runner-up was St Gerald’s College and third place went to Widcombe Wrobotiers. These three teams will now go forward to represent the UK & Ireland at the World Festival in Atlanta and the Open European Championship in Copenhagen. We wish the teams the very best of luck- have a great time!
See the full list of Award Winners.