Robots will takeover the ACC gymnasium on Saturday, December 10^th as AIM Academy hosts 12 area teams for a FIRST Lego League (FLL) Qualifier Competition.

AIM's own Wolf Pack, including nine 4^th – 6^th graders, will be among the competitors during the lively, daylong competition. The FLL teams are competing in this year's Animal Allies themed-challenges which includes three parts: the robot game, the project challenge and core values.

During the much anticipated Robot Game portion of the event, teams compete with specially built and designed Lego Mindstorms robots to run their programmed robots through a variety of "missions" on a giant game board filled with interactive Lego structures.

The Animal Allies project challenge tasked teams to identify a problem of people and humans interacting and design a solution that makes humans interactions with other animals better. Teams present their problem and solution to panels of judges during the day. Throughout the event teams are judged on the ways they display the core values of the event celebrating gracious professionalism, discovery and teamwork.

AIM's Wolf Pack team, which is competing in FIRST FLL for the third year in a row, has been perfecting it's robot programming and project development for the last several months. The team is excited to present their organization, the Educational Leech Learning Association, to the judges. This organization was created to educate people about the medical and scientific benefits of leeches and comes equipped with it's very own product development center. The Wolf Pack team designed a prototype of their Leech Catcher and printed it using a 3D Printer in the Engineering and Robotics lab.

The FLL Wolf Pack team is the competitive starting point for AIM's Robotics program. Middle School students competed in the FIRST Tech Challenge last month and our high school Wolf Pack team will compete in the FIRST Robotics Competition later this year.

"With all of our robotics programs, the robot (and engineering activities) are the hook, but it really has little to do with why we do it," said Middle and Upper School Engineering and Robotics teacher Rob Ervin. "It's all about taking on a really hard challenge, working as a team and learning how to succeed at that challenge."

Come cheer on the AIM team and get a taste of FLL which includes more than 28,000 teams worldwide. The popular, Robot Game portion of the competition begins at 1:30 p.m. Winning teams at AIM's qualifying event will move on to compete in the regional competition at the University of Pennsylvania in February.