The Roberts Creek Xtreme Robotic Minds (RCXRM) are off to Van-couver this weekend to pit their robot and research against teams from across the province in the First Lego League Nano Quest provincial championships.
This year's theme, dubbed Nano Quest, had RCXRM discover a way to solve a problem using nanotechnology.
"Nanotechnology is basically the science of making things really, really small," said RCXRM teammate Kiel Strang.The team decided to focus on the prevalent issue of global warming and came up with the idea of creating a spray-on solar panel system to combat its effects.
"Solar power seems to be the most promising form of clean energy, as only 0.1 per cent of the solar energy reaching the earth could supply current global energy demand if we could capture all of it," the team's research stated.
The team came up with the RCXRM nano solar solution, which incorporates the latest advances in nanotechnology to produce self-assembling solar panels that can be sprayed on to most surfaces.
"A spray-on, self-assembly system allows the solar cells to be easily and inexpensively applied to almost any surface," their pamphlet states.
RCXRM teammates Kiel, Oliver Gidora, Terran Tasci and Philip Klippenstein spent months speaking with professionals and researching to come up with their spray-on solar panel idea and even more time creating and tweaking their new robot, the second component of the First Lego League Nano Quest competition.
Teams must present their research to judges and then present a completed Lego robot that must navigate through a series of obstacles and challenges on a tabletop course. Both components of the competition earn the team points, and the team with the most points in the end will win the provincials and go on to compete at the world championships in Atlanta.
RCXRM made it to the world competition last year and they're hoping to gain a spot again this year.
"I think we have a good chance, but there is some tough competition to beat," Kiel noted a few days before the team left for the provincials.
For more information about the First Lego League, go to www.firstlegoleague.org.
