Ben Pifher/MDN Nhyira Boamah, left, and Anjuli Schmidt, right, prepare their robot to complete its next mission during the Full Steam Ahead LEGO tournament held at Minot State University. Observing them as a referee is Laura Erickson.

Two tables were set up in a gymnasium at the Full Steam Ahead LEGO Tournament at Minot State University on Saturday, and excited parents, coaches and competitors were cheering their favorite teams on.

Teams of kids ranging from grades 4-6 were given kits to design and build a LEGO robot, and they designed and programmed the machines to complete challenges.

The teams were given the layout and missions in August 2024, according to Ali Auch, the event’s executive director, and were able to develop their plan and programs even on the day of the competition. She explained each team had three attempts to complete the challenges, called missions, with 45 minutes between each attempt when they could practice or modify their robots.

Each robot faced 15 missions where they had to manipulate different items in different ways, navigating through the cluttered tables.

Jill Roberts, team coach for Ely Elementary in Rugby, said her team learned the different missions from a video, then decided which they wanted to try for, based on the number of points each was worth and how difficult it was to complete. Some objects were meant to be pushed to certain spots, others lifted and placed certain ways.

The robots were reset between each mission attempt, with the teams orienting them on markers, sometimes using LEGO jigs, but from there the robots were all autonomous.

“It’s all pre-coded,” Roberts said. “At this point they’re just lining it up, and pushing the button and hoping it all goes well.”

Auch said if the team touched the robot while it was performing a mission, they would suffer a penalty.

Before the robots competed in their missions, each team presented an innovation project and was interviewed by judges. Presentation boards, designed and decorated by the teams, showed off their ideas, which varied widely from developing better tagging systems for sharks, to tackling the problem of rivers feeding pollution into the oceans.

The judges made the interviews fun for the kids, asking fun as well as challenging questions, Roberts said.

Warren Gamas, one of the competition’s judges, said each year the competition has a theme and as part of the theme, the teams are encouraged to reach out for help from professionals in related fields. Sometimes the teams contact zookeepers and biologists, and sometimes they reach out to and learn from astronauts, Gamas said. Gamas said the judges aren’t looking at the idea so much as the process on how the teams worked toward their goals.

The teams were judged on aspects of teamwork and design, meant to teach them about the ethics, teamwork and collaboration required for engineering design challenges, Gamas said. Those were robot design, the robot run, their innovation project and judges also considered the team’s Core Values, in which they were judged on their ethics, teamwork and collaboration.

“That didn’t have anything to do with how the robot ran out there, but it’s an important piece to what LEGO league is about,” Gamas said.

From the competition, six teams advanced to state to be held in Grand Forks. Those teams, in no order of rank, were the Barracudas, Sea Lions, Good Vibes and Six Flying Sharks, all of Minot; the Honker Bots of Kenmare and the Dino Nuggies of Underwood.