Robotics teams from throughout the state of Mississippi will be in Vicksburg Saturday competing in two of the five qualifiers for the state FIRST LEGO League Robotics competition.

Twenty-two teams, including six from Vicksburg, will be competing Saturday. The competition requires students in teams of two to 10 members to build and program a LEGO Mindstorm Ev3 robot to accomplish a series of challenges within a two and a half minute time period. Each team also has to complete a research project on an assigned topic, which is hydrodynamics this year.

“It is kind of like a combination robot competition and science fair project,” Steve Kitchens, the tournament director in Vicksburg, said. “The Ev3 part of the robot is just a little computer block and you attach LEGO motors to it and you add wheels to it so it will move and different attachments hook to motors that will lift LEGO water to take to the flower or lift a pipe that needs to be repaired and bring it back to base.”

Kitchens said students have been working since August to build their robots, program them and accomplish the research project.

“There is four foot by eight-foot table they compete on and there are 18 different missions they can try to accomplish,” Kitchens said. “Each mission is worth between 20 and 30 points. In addition to the point competition they are judged in three different areas — robot design, core values which is basically teamwork and the project.”

The competition is open to students in fourth through eighth grade and for this year’s project portion, they had to research and provide solutions to a problem related to water. 

“They were challenged to identify problems that dealt with water,” Kitchens said. “Finding water, transporting water, using water or disposing of water. Each team had to identify a problem with those things and then research that problem and come up with a solution. It is kind of like a combination robot competition and science fair project.”

Statewide, 82 teams will be competing for a spot in the state competition Feb. 10 in Clinton. FIRST is an international non-profit organization that holds robotics competitions for students from kindergarten to 12^th grade.

“They like to call it the sport for the mind,” Kitchens said. “There are so many kids out there that they are not really into baseball, football, soccer or something like that. This gives those kids the ability to have a team sport that is more mind based than physical based.”