Menlo Park Narleaotters reach milestones during FIRST Lego League season

The Menlo Park Narleaotters FIRST Lego League (FLL) robotics team, comprised of local 5th grade students from Oak Knoll Elementary, La Entrada Middle School, Synapse School, and Encinal Elementary, shined during the 2022-23 Superpowered FLL season.

During the FLL season, the team designed, built, and block programmed a robot out of Lego Technic parts to perform challenges on a table on its own using sensors and motors.

In addition, the FLL competition challenges students to develop an innovative solution to an energy-related problem. The Narleaotters created SavEnergy, an Android app they designed and coded to motivate people to save energy in their homes daily. The team met with domain experts from Peninsula Clean Energy to gather feedback and iterate on the app before launching it in the Google Play Store.

After receiving the Innovation Project Award at the Northern California Qualifier, the Narleaotters were nominated out of 40,000 worldwide teams to compete in this year’s Western Edge Invitational in Long Beach, CA.  At Western Edge, they competed with 75 teams from around the world, running their robot through a series of challenges and scoring points along the way.

The team is looking forward to kicking off the new FLL season with the “Masterpiece” theme, where they will imagine and innovate new ways to create and communicate art across the globe. They have learned from and looked up to their youth mentor, a Menlo-Atherton High freshman FLL alumnus.

The Narleaotters welcome opportunities to volunteer in the community with K-5 grade groups to teach more about robotics, coding, and FIRST Lego League; feel free to contact at narleaotters@gmail.com.