FIRST LEGO League announced 20 semi-finalist teams would advance to the Seventh Annual FIRST LEGO League Global Innovation Award. The Jasper County 4-H Gearbots, from Newton were selected from entries from 30 countries for their outstanding Project innovative solution, the Calf Pacifier, that demonstrated originality while having the potential to add significant value in the world. The team will travel to Washington, D.C. USA from June 18-20 to present their innovation to expert judges.
All semi-finalists will participate in a two day, hands-on innovation event at the Kellogg Conference Center, which culminates in the awarding of the top prize of $20,000 USD to continue work on their inventions; two runners-up will take home $5,000 each.
The FIRST LEGO League Global Innovation Award demonstrates that FIRST LEGO League teams emerge from the program as better visionaries and divergent thinkers — and yes, as actual inventors. Past winning teams have focused on helping people and changing lives — from a device that allowed a toddler with a hand difference to learn to write, to a chemical process to change Styrofoam to activated carbon for filtration, to a touch-based App allowing blind children to learn Braille unassisted. The FIRST LEGO League Global Innovation teams are changing the world, one invention at a time.
FIRST LEGO League is an international program for 9 to 16 year-old children (ages vary by country) created in a partnership between FIRST and the LEGO Group in 1998 to get children excited about science and technology — and teach them valuable career and life skills. Children work alongside adult Mentors to design, build, and program autonomous robots using LEGO MINDSTORMS and create an innovative solution to a problem as part of their research project.
Innovators and inventors play a critical role in growing our economy and improving our quality of life. The FIRST LEGO League Global Innovation Award presented is designed to encourage and assist teams with the further development of their original and important ideas for solving global issues.
Inventions under consideration in the FIRST LEGO League Global Innovation Semi-Finals epitomize innovative thinking and the FIRST mantra More than RobotsSM.
The Global Innovation Award is sponsored by Booz Allen Hamilton, John Deere, LEGO Education, NRG, Rockwell Collins, and XPRIZE and in collaboration with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.