Students sending Bob, George on Lego mission

Moanalua Middle School students will travel to Atlanta for an international robotics competition

Most of the time, the Lego robots that 10 Moanalua Middle School students built did not work.

The robots -- their unofficial names are George and Bob -- overshot their target or missed it completely, frustrating the Lego lovers who spent about six months working on them.

Yet the students managed to win the FIRST Lego League Hawaii Regionals in December and are hoping they can pull off the same miracle next week at the international competition.

The students on the robotics team are going to Atlanta on Tuesday to see if George and Bob can beat out the other 103 teams from 39 countries in a competition organized by the nonprofit organization For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.

"We were so lucky we won," said HollyAnn Loui, who got into robotics as a sixth-grader. "It's really stressful when you're there, but it's also really fun because everyone's yelling and running around."

The robot maneuvers through eight missions on a large play board that resembles a large board game. The more missions the robot completes in 2 1/2 minutes, the more points the team wins -- with a maximum of 400 points.

Sounds simple, but there is no remote control. The students create a computer program for the robot to follow using light sensors, but that changes on every run depending on the battery's life or the starting point.

"Hopefully by the time of the competition, it will work," said Erik Okamura, one of the lead students programming the robot.

The theme of this year's competition is "Nano Quest." Another part of the competition is the students' research and presentation on nanotechnology. They created "Tiny but Mighty, the Sewageanator," which is made up of tiny sponges to soak up bacteria from sewage spills, inspired by last year's flood of the Ala Wai Canal.

They have the presentation down after practicing for weeks. They say they are more worried about the robot's performance. Robotics team coach and math teacher David Arakaki estimates that he bought about 200 batteries to operate the robots.

"Besides batteries, we go through a lot of food," joked team member Anna Karvina Pidong.

The third and last part of the competition is teamwork, something they do not really worry about after spending practically every day together. They sold chips and saimin as fundraisers -- and ended up eating a lot of them as well.

"I was 94 pounds when I joined," one said as they all joked about how much food they ate. "Now I'm 110."

They are still waiting for their spring break after spending all of it practicing.

"We're going to take a very stressful vacation," said Tim Kaufman of their time in Atlanta. "I hope we get lucky again."