On Nov. 15, many schools from the Carlsbad School District competed in an elementary level robotics competition. The event was hosted by the Robotic Club here at Carlsbad High School through the First Robotics national organization branch for elementary school children called the First Lego League.

The intention of the organization is to expose kids ranging from ages five to eighteen to the field of engineering through robotics. This introduction of the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) core subjects in a fun and interesting way is supposed to make careers in these areas more appealing for next generations.

In a typical competition, there are three sections. First, is the robot game which is where the kids use the robot that they have programmed to score points by completing as many tasks within an allotted amount of time. Secondly, there is a project portion where the teams come up with a solution to an issue previously identified to them. And lastly, there is a judging section.

Robotics Club took on many responsibilities by hosting the tournament to ensure that all of the activities ran smoothly.

“The Robotics Club acted as referees at the competition, making sure that everyone followed the rules,” senior President Tyra Wu said. “Also, we had to go through a lot of training in order to properly judge the competition.”

Similar to competition on the high school level, all elementary student teams were allotted a few months to build their Lego-made robot with the ability to complete a specified task.

“All of the schools did very well in the competition,” Wu said. “It was very impressive to see elementary school kids with the ability to build and program robots at such a young age.”