FAQs - FIRST^® LEGO^® League Challenge

• A LEGO® SPIKE™ Prime Core and Expansion Set.
• A computer, laptop or tablet on which you can run the software – this is free to download from the LEGO® Education website.
• Basic stationery for the Innovation Project.
• The season’s Challenge Set, which you will be sent after your team has paid for registration through the IET FIRST® LEGO® League website. This is a mat with LEGO® missions that the robot needs to complete.

Just like when setting up a new sports team, you’ll need to invest in a bit of kit (see above).. However, there are various options you could explore to keep these costs down. For example:

• Approach local engineering-based companies to see if they’ll sponsor you as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) work. As well as helping with your costs, they could provide team t-shirts with the company’s logo, and feature in any local media coverage of your team’s work – young people competing with LEGO® robots makes for a good news story. They could also provide a mentor to support the team.
• Contact your local STEM Learning contract holder to see if they know of anyone in the area who has a spare SPIKE™ Prime kit that you could borrow while you get started.
• Hold a “LEGO® Amnesty” by asking parents to donate unused LEGO® to your team with which they can build their robot.
• Contact us at FLLChallenge@theiet.co.uk to see if we have any sponsored team places available. Each year various companies sponsor teams to take part in the competition. There may be specific eligibility requirements.

The challenge is released on 1 August, and your Challenge Set will be sent to you soon after this (as long as you’ve paid your registration fee!). If you have some time available before this, get your team to start exploring their robotics kit and the programming software.

When the challenge is released, your initial role is to focus your team on digesting the information in the documents and helping them to organise their time. It’s important that they make the decisions on what they do, but you can make sure they’re not getting too absorbed in one side of the challenge at the expense of the other two. They need to work just as hard on the Innovation Project as the robot and need to demonstrate their Core Values in everything they do.

No. It’s useful to have this because the team may want to use the walls when tackling some of the missions - but many teams do very well without it. If you want to build one, instructions are in the Robot Game table build instructions [PDF, 638KB] for this season. The event organisers will provide the competition tables on the day, and usually a couple of practice tables for the teams to share.

The Innovation Project, Robot Game, Robot Design and the Core Values are all equally weighted parts of FIRST® LEGO® League Challenge. The most successful teams are those who perform consistently well across all categories.

No. It’s not difficult to pick up the basics of the software and it’s up to the team members to find the information they need to complete the challenges.

Download the latest version of the software for free.

No. It’s very unusual for a team to do this, with teams on average completing two or three missions. Your team needs to strategically choose which missions to tackle to maximise points over the two-and-a-half-minute length of the match. Make sure the team read the rules carefully and don’t miss missions where they can pick up easy points.

The majority of teams keep their robot pretty simple. Most teams will be just as nervous as yours before they get to the tournament, but if they do find themselves competing against a very experienced team in the Robot Game, encourage your team to learn all they can from watching them – and remember that FIRST® LEGO® League Challenge isn’t only about the robots! Tournament staff will be working hard to make sure that your team leave feeling good about what they’ve done and the atmosphere at the events is always friendly and supportive.

At the beginning, you can help your team to digest the rules by dividing the document up into manageable chunks. You can also pick out things that you think will be particularly relevant to your team’s planning and bring these to their attention.

The rules are carefully worded so that they can be taken literally - younger participants may need your support to get used to this. It’s crucial that the team understands how their robot needs to work from the outset so that they don’t spend lots of time working on a design that won’t be accepted on tournament day. To pick out a few key things to help them get started:

• The robot has to be made entirely of LEGO® parts.
• The robot has to be programmed so that it runs autonomously on the mat (they can’t control it using Bluetooth).
• They can program it to come back as often as they like during the two-and-a-half minutes of the game so that they can restart it with a different program.
• Anything the robot does (good or bad) stays as it is - they can’t reset a mission with their hands during the Robot Game if the robot doesn’t do what it’s meant to.
• Points are given based on how the mat looks when the clock stops.

NB This list is not exhaustive – it’s essential that your team spends time checking the rules to make sure that their robot design will be accepted on the day.

The age range of 9 to 16 means that participants are able to progress steadily over several years and newer teams can learn from experienced ones at tournaments.

If you’re working with younger children, please reassure them that the atmosphere at the tournament event will be friendly and welcoming. They also have every chance of winning awards: a third of teams who progressed to the 2019-20 UK and Ireland Finals were aged 9 to 11.

The fact that FIRST® LEGO® League Challenge emphasises the Innovation Project and Core Values as much as the Robot Game means that the programme is accessible to a wider range of children than most other robotics competitions.

Teams arrive at the venue, check-in and are each allocated their own “pit” area. This is their home space for the day (the local organisers will confirm what is and isn’t provided at their venue). There will be time for the team to settle in.

The day kicks off with an opening ceremony, in which the emcee will explain the timetable for the day and the awards that are up for grabs. Different tournaments use different timetable formats depending on the number of teams present and the facilities available. Over the course of the day, your team will compete with their robot in three Robot Games and be interviewed by a panel of judges on their approach to the design of their robot. They will also need to give a five-minute presentation on their Innovation Project to the judging panel who will then ask them questions about their work.

Some tournaments include Robot Game knockout rounds and some will run additional activities for the teams while the judges deliberate. The day will end with the awards ceremony, at which every participant will receive a FIRST® LEGO® League Challenge medal. A range of awards are presented and the overall champion team will be invited to progress to the National Finals.

As long as your team have made an effort to tackle the Innovation Project and Robot Game in the spirit of the Core Values, they will learn a lot from attending the tournament and will enjoy the day.

The aim of the tournament is to celebrate the work that the teams have done. All tournament staff will be working hard to make sure that there is a positive, encouraging atmosphere, so whether the team win an award or not they should come away feeling good about their work. If they’ve enjoyed working on the challenges and have fun at the tournament then you will have completed a successful year in FIRST® LEGO® League Challenge and should be well placed to go again next season!

Yes, this happens a lot. A few new teams every year win the Champion’s Award at their tournament, and in 2016 the top award at the UK and Ireland Final was won by a primary school team who were taking part for the first time. They went on to represent their country at the FIRST® LEGO® League Challenge World Festival in the USA, where they won an award for innovation.