Longmont robotics team scores high at state championship

"Coloboc" First Lego League competed in the state championships Jan. 17, 2015. Left to right, back row: Dennis Pozhidaev, Phillip Belous and Anton Lavrouk. Center, front: Mark Fedorchuk.

A Longmont-based "Coloboc" First Lego League vehicle during the state championship in Jan. 17, 2015

By Aleksey Pozhidaev

A Longmont-based "Coloboc" First Lego League (FLL) robotics team scored high at the state championship at Westminster High School. The team started the season with a solid win at the regional qualifier as first place champions at the Preston qualifier in Fort Collins on Nov. 22, 2014. Upon completion of all regional qualifiers, only a small fraction of the 320 (estimated) participating FLL teams advanced on to the state level.

At the state championship on Jan. 17, 2015, the "Coloboc" team took 12th place in Robot Performance, which places their robot in the top 5 percent statewide, thus proving the effectiveness of their robot software and solidness of its mechanical design.

This was the team's second FLL season. The team consists of four kids and three high school mentors: Mark Fedorchuk, 10, Heatherwood Elementary school; Dennis Pozhidaev, 12, Twin Peaks Charter Academy; Anton Lavrouk, 12, Altona Middle school; Phillip Belous, 13, Twin Peaks Charter Academy; Marina Boiko, 15, mentor, Niwot High School; Ilya Fedorchuk, mentor, 16, Fairview High School; and Daniel Boiko, 17, mentor, Niwot High School. The team is coached by Vyacheslav Fedorchuk.

The team started their preparations for the current FLL season at the beginning of 2013. Prep work for the competition included subjects above and beyond the regular elementary/middle school curriculum: three programming languages (java script, HTML and RobotC), application-specific trigonometry, fundamentals of electronic circuitry, gracious professionalism using examples from lives of world famous people, and theory of robot's hardware.

The competition ranks each team in the following four categories: research project, technical interview, robot performance/game, and core values. This year the theme for the FLL competition was "World Class Education." Each team must present an innovative idea, research their idea, construct a prototype, and share it with organizations and individuals that may benefit from it. The team then presents it at the competition.

The "Coloboc" kids proposed a way in which to help students around the world learn foreign languages using a free-of-charge video-conferencing website. The team developed a multi-page beta version website that pairs up students with local and/or international teachers who are native language speakers. The program supports a shared white-board feature for enhanced student/teacher interaction and provides per-session moderators. The "Coloboc" team sharpened their public-speaking skills by demonstrating their working prototype at three local companies, Longmont's "Intercambio De Comunidades," students and faculty of the CU Boulder Global Studies RAP Program, and at the Longmont American Legion Post #32. (Thank you very much to the local community for supporting the team's efforts.)

Besides admirable achievements in Project implementation and sharing, the team showed strong technical knowledge during the Technical Interview. Overall, the kids demonstrated solid teamwork during the Core Values portion of the competition, true cooperation and respect for each other that were fueled by examples set forth by their coach, mentors, parents, schools, and the local community.

The team came very close to advancing on to the World qualifiers, proving that hard work supported by teachers, community and families does pay off.