IFIC advises high school students on the development of a sustainable city project for the LEGO League
Invictus Lego, the robotics group from the Pureza de María-Cid School from València aims to use energy in cities more efficiently and in a sustainable way. An IFIC team advises them on the scientific and technological challenges of the project, as it did in the last edition where Valencian students won one of the prizes in the international final held in Detroit (USA).
17 de december de 2019
Improve the life quality of city residents and build an environment where they can live and work without destroying the environment. This is the challenge presented in this edition of the FIRST LEGO League, a competition that every year defies thousands of young people around the world to find solutions to real-world problems using science, technology and their imagination. The IFIC advises one of the participating teams.
The FIRST LEGO League is aimed at students between the ages of 10 and 16. Every year, more than 2,000 teams from 100 countries take part, classifying in different rounds (autonomous, national and international, in the case of Spain). The challenge of the 2019-20 edition is called CITY SHAPER. It consists of identifying problems in our cities and creating innovative solutions to improve the life quality of the residents without destroying the environment, using the tools and technology of today. The competition is divided into three sections: a robot game, an innovation project and the associated values.
Invictus Lego is the name of the robotics team of the School Pureza de María - Cid (València). They participated for the first time in the competition of the Valencian Community in 2011, obtaining since then several prizes in the Spanish competition. This is how they obtained the pass to the world finals of Australia, Estonia and Detroit (USA). In the last edition they obtained the First Prize to the team-work with a project in which they proposed a system to build a special shield that protects astronauts of the ionising radiation emitted by solar eruptions.
In the development of this project they were advised by Enrique Nácher González, from IFIC, member of the Gamma and Neutron Spectroscopy Group of the Institute, with extensive experience in the particle study that is part of this cosmic radiation.
After the good results obtained in the previous edition, the team of Valencian students once again relies on the advice of IFIC to develop a project for the present challenge. On this occasion they have decided to work on the idea of achieving a city where all the energy used is generated in a clean way, thus avoiding carbon dioxide emissions that harm the planet.
“Sometimes, as researchers, we lose direct contact with such young students and we don't realise to what extent they are an inexhaustible source of valuable ideas,” says Enrique Nácher. “It is a pleasure to lend a hand in this project to such a motivated and hard-working team of young people, it reassures me to think that there are such capable people among the generations to come”. The project will be presented at the FIRST LEGO League held in Alcoi on February 8th, 2020. The Spanish final is held in Santa Cruz de Tenerife in March, and the world final in Detroit takes place between April and July.