FIRST® LEGO® League

The FIRST® LEGO® League (also known by the acronym FLL®) is an international competition for elementary and middle school students (ages 9-14 in the USA and Canada, 9-16 elsewhere). It is arranged by the FIRST® organization.



Each year the contest focuses on a different real-world topic related to the sciences. Each challenge within the competition then revolves around that theme. The robotics part of the competition revolves around designing and programming LEGO® robots to complete tasks. The students work out solutions to the various problems they are given and then meet for regional tournaments to share their knowledge, compare ideas, and display their robots.
FIRST® LEGO® League is a partnership between FIRST® and The LEGO® Group. 

Competition Details​

There are four main sections of the competition. Firstly, students are interviewed by a panel of judges, measuring their teamwork. This is called the teamwork activity. Secondly, the students must demonstrate that the robot that they built is designed appropriately for the tasks given (they look for effective design, use of sensors, etc.). This is called the technical presentation Thirdly, the students must do a research project and give a short presentation to a panel of judges on the investigative problem solving they completed. Finally, the students must use the robots they designed to complete a set of tasks on a playing field. 

Each Team can only have three motors per robot You are not even allowed to have a fourth motor sealed in it's package in your pocket. The four sections of the competition might be mixed up so you might have the teamwork third.

FIRST® LEGO® League (FLL®) teams use LEGO® Mindstorms kits, and one of two graphical based programming languages: NXT G, the programming software that comes with the kit, or Robolab, a software language, that was originally built using, and designed to be like a real language used by professionals called Labview, to build and program small autonomous robots that traverse these playing fields and complete the given tasks. Each robot is only allowed to use a certain number of sensors and up to 3 motors.

Teams in different parts of the world have different times allotted to complete the construction of the robot, due to the varying date of qualifying tournaments. They go on to compete in FLL® tournaments, similar to the FIRST® Robotics Competition regionals. In the 2006-2007 season, nearly 90,000 students in 8,846 teams from around the world competed. Each team has to compete in a local/regional qualifying tournament before advancing to the state/provincial tournaments. The largest single-day regional qualifying tournament is hosted by First State Robotics and First State FIRST® LEGO® League in Wilmington, Delaware. Taking place every January, this event holds FIRST® LEGO® League (FLL®), Junior FIRST® LEGO® League (Jr.FLL®), and FIRST® Tech Challenge (FTC) competitions under one roof at the University of Delaware's Bob Carpenter Center. 

also (FRC®) and robot sumo competition, Teams from Eastern Pennsylvania, Southern New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland (among other regions) attend this tournament to make it that largest single-day FIRST® event in the world.
The first place Champions Award winners from each state/provincial tournament (only if that state/provincial tournament has won the lottery to send teams) is then invited to the FLL® World Festival. In 2007, 96 teams competed in the FLL® World Festival in Atlanta, Georgia on April, 12th-14th. The 2007-2008 Power Puzzle FLL® World Festival and the 2008-2009 FLL® World Festival on Climate Connections were held again in the Georgia Dome and Georgia World Congress Center. 

Additionally, the Champions Award winners from each state/provincial tournament may participate in one of the Open Championships which are organized by FLL® Partners. The eligibility criteria may differ.