Lego team wins second place

AUGUSTA — The “Auto-Medics,” a South Paris First Lego League (FLL) team, won the second place overall Champions Award recently at the Maine First Lego League Championship at the Augusta Civic Center. There were 66 teams who competed in the tournament.

The Champions Award recognizes a team that embodies the FLL experience, by fully embracing FLL’s core values while achieving excellence and innovation in both the Robot Game and Project. They also won first place for Gracious Professionalism. This award recognizes a team whose members show each other and other teams respect at all times.

They recognize that both friendly competition and mutual gain are possible, on and off the playing field. The team is comprised of six fifth and sixth graders: Andrew Binette, Cecelia Dieterich, Will Dieterich, Owen Orlando, Sully Poland and Colby Ventresca, who all attend Paris Elementary School.

The team is coached by Celia Dieterich and Mike Binette. The team may now qualify for Invitational Open Championships in Florida or California.

FLL is an alliance between LEGO and FIRST that introduces younger students (nine to 14 years old) to real-world engineering challenges. The program is designed to get children excited about science and technology and at the same time teaching them valuable employment and life skills.

This year's FLL theme was Senior Solutions. The team has been meeting since September and has visited the Veteran’s Home and met with other seniors in the community to discuss issues people face as they age.

The team chose to design an automated pill dispenser to help reduce patient non-compliance with home medication.

Their design incorporates automatic dispensing, pharmacist refill, alarms, app for smart phone and link to Life Alert.

Photo:

ROBOT MISSION — Will and Cecelia Dieterich get ready to run the robot mission at the Maine First Lego League Championship.