[The following post was submitted to us by Cheryl Lawniczak for the Hippie Pandas. If you’d like to submit your story, email communications@gswny.org]

The GSWNY FIRST Lego Robotics team Hippie Pandas has won Champions Award and our robot scored the highest points at their first competition. They have earned a spot in the Finger Lakes Regional Championship  tournament which is December 8th.

This year.s theme is City Shapers and they had to come up with an innovative solution to help our community with a building or public space. The problem they chose was there was no outdoor activity that would be accessible to all ages and abilities to promote community cooperation and interaction. Their project was to build an Interactive Musical Park featuring The Hippie  Panda Musical Tower of Play and Freenotes Harmony Park outdoor percussion instruments.

During the research the talked with many experts: Town Supervisor, Director of Parks and Recreation, Construction Manager who recently installed the ADA playground at a local school, an Industrial Hygienist to determine sound levels and the Richard Cooke the Grammy Award winning inventor of Freenotes Harmony Park instruments!

The girls’ robot has innovative design that allows quick change out of attachments. They call the concept the Universal Gravity Attachments. Their robot activates LEGO mission models such as aligning a crane and lowering the load onto a building, removing a traffic jam, releasing a wheelchair swing, lowering an elevator, staging modular buildings across the field and raising flags on a bridge.

It’s been an exciting year and they are busy preparing for the Regional!