The Tenerife team, ‘Aldeatron Robotix’, made up of young people from Adeje, San Miguel and Granadilla, have just been named World Champions and winners of the Global Innovation Award in the First Lego League.
Many of the team are from Adeje, one is a student in the Costa Adeje International College, and captain of his after-school activity Robótica Educativa, which is based in the school. This year, as they couldn’t actually compete ‘in situ’ given the pandemic, the competition was held online. The Adeje councillor for sports, Adolfo Alonso, congratulated the whole team “for their extraordinary work, and their perseverance and strength which brought them this success”.
The team were interviewed on the local station, Radio Sur Adeje 107.9 recently, talking about the experience and winning the award.
The winning project, entitled, ‘E=Wall’, is a low cost, lightweight, eco-friendly building block made from recycled cardboard and Fountain grass, which is an invasive species in the Canary Islands. The block which can be manufactured locally, encourages bio construction and sustainable construction.
The team, under the direction of the robotics teacher Tony Cuesta, who is also an astrophysicist and has worked in aeronautic maintenance and renewable energies with ITER, has worked on scientific solutions, looking to solve real problems such as: intelligent tubes that can detect water leaks; navigation systems that would detect cetaceans in the sea and avoid collisions.
Aldeatron Robotix’ came together 8 years ago and since then they have taken part in every First Lego League event, which challenges participants to solve some of our societies day-to-day problems – so as well as being a genuine challenge, students learn to use science as an educational and aware-raising tool.
