The InfoBots earned their bid by participating in a qualifying tournament last month at Oak Grove Middle School. That day’s performance also won the team an Outstanding Project Award for their plastic bag exchange partnership with Publix. The award recognizes a team that uses diverse resources to formulate an in-depth and comprehensive understanding of the problem they have identified and effectively communicates the problem and their proposed solution to both the judges and other potential supporters.

Each FIRST LEGO LEAGUE (FLL) Challenge has three parts: the Robot Game, the Project, and the FLL Core Values. Teams of up to 10 children, with at least one adult coach, participate in the Challenge by programming an autonomous robot to score points on a themed playing field (Robot Game), developing a solution to the problem they have identified (Project), all guided by FLL Core Values. Teams may then attend an official tournament. This year is the TRASH TREK Challenge, in which students are asked to consider the world’s trash for their project – how it is collected, sorted, reused, and recycled.