On 20 January 2024, young people's heads were once again spinning in the lecture hall centre at TU Dresden. Once again, the TUD was the venue for the regional competition of the FIRST® LEGO® League Challenge, which is organised by the Landesverband Sächsischer Jugendbildungswerke e.V. (Saxon Youth Education Association). 10 teams from all over Saxony, as well as a Czech team from the "International School Prague", took part in this year's edition of the competition, which was held under the theme "MASTERPIECE". In the areas of research, robotics and creative problem solving, the aim was to demonstrate their skills, recognise all teams and their achievements and ultimately send the two best teams to the semi-finals in north-east Germany in Eberswalde.

The centrepiece of the competition - the robot challenge - involved solving 15 tasks (moving levers, collecting bricks, etc.) on the playing field in 2:30 minutes with a robot that the participants had designed and programmed themselves and collecting points. In the second part of the competition, a panel of experts, including students and lecturers from the Department of Engineering Sciences such as Prof Michael Beitelschmidt (Chair of Dynamics and Mechanism Design), assessed the teamwork, the robot design and the solution to a research task. In this task, the teams had to inspire with innovative ideas from their hobbies. In robot design, the young engineers' planning, construction and programming skills were then scrutinised.

In addition, the aspiring programmers were able to learn a lot about studying at TU Dresden during their breaks from the competition. The School of Engineering Sciences presented itself with an information stand where, in keeping with the competition theme, a candle extinguishing robot built from LEGO by mechatronics students was presented in addition to the range of courses on offer.

© Nadja Bauer

Further information:

https://www.ljbw.de/de/angebote/wettbewerbe/first-lego-league-challenge.html