Kincardine FIRST Lego League Team 4137 cleans up

The FIRST Lego League (FLL) Team 4137, the Clean-up Crew, of Kincardine has had an exciting season.
 

FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is an organization with the goal of getting young people interested in science and technology. Kincardine is well-known for its FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) teams - Team 781, the Kinetic Knights, has been very successful in competition in Canada and the United States.
 

FLL is the Grades 4-8 part of FIRST. Lego League is about much more than Lego; successful teams spend two-thirds of their time working on teamwork and on a project that solves a real world problem. This year’s project theme was Trash Trek – many thousands of students around the world came up with ideas on how to solve problems about trash.
 

Team 4137, the Clean-up Crew, won the Champion’s Award at the FLL Regional competition in Kincardine, Nov. 28. Team members spent the Christmas holidays and most of January getting ready for the Ontario West Provincial Championships at the University of Waterloo. At provincials, the preparation paid off - the team won a Global Innovation Award for its recycling cover project idea, and was invited to the FIRST Ontario Innovation Celebration at the IBM Centre in Markham, Feb. 27.
 

Eighteen FLL teams were at the competition from as far away as Ottawa and North Bay. The Clean-up Crew was unusual in that it was the only team from a small centre, and one of the very few teams that had developed a completely-functional prototype of an inexpensive consumer product idea.

At the competition, the team presented its idea to other teams, and then had a judging session where team members had to pitch their product concept to a panel of judges in a session similar to what you see on "Dragon’s Den." The judges complimented the Clean-up Crew on the research and the simplicity of the concept it had developed, and a coach from another team asked if he could buy one of the team’s covers.
 

Other teams at the competition presented ideas on recycling car tires as phone covers, and recovering silicates from slurry during manufacturing. Every team at the competition had a strong product concept and presented it well.
 

Team 4137 did not win the competition; however, the team has decided to do follow-up work on its project, and has entered the Hawk’s Nest Challenge.
 

The team members appreciate everyone who has supported them by watching their videos, taking their survey, and contributing to their bottle drive. The team is especially excited that it has been nominated for an OPG Environmental Award through the Kincardine Chamber of Commerce community achievement awards.