Congratulations to the Redwood Shores based team — The Plastic That Moves — who recently participated in the Northern California First Lego League (FLL) Robotics Championship on January 29th.

Four members of the team – James George, Patrick Hsu, Everett Yee, and Bryan Yeh are former Sandpiper students and are currently attending Ralston or Carlmont. Also on the team was Adam Cobb of Belmont.

First Lego League (FLL) is part of the US FIRST family of robotics competitions whose purpose is to inspire student interest in science and technology. This season there were more than 15,000 FLL teams in more than 50 countries, with more than 7,000 teams here in the United States.

Guided by the team coaches each team must research and solve a real-world problem based on the annual Challenge theme, build an autonomous LEGO Mindstorms robot using engineering concepts, and present their research and solutions. In addition to robot performance, each team is judged on teamwork, engineering design, and their research project.

The Challenge theme for 2010 was biomedical engineering. The team’s research project focused on diseases of the eye and how an improved visual prosthesis could be a solution in restoring eyesight to the blind. As part of their research the team visited the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to talk with Dr. Satinderpall Pannu, leader of the Department of Energy’s Artificial Retina Project.

The team’s five month journey included many hours of robot design, programming and testing, research including interviews with doctors and scientists and creating a group presentation. The team had to advance through two tournaments to reach the Championship. Out of 335 teams in Northern California that started out the season the team was selected as one of the top 48 to participate in the Championship. Along the way the team was awarded the Outstanding Rookie Team Award at the Peninsula Regional tournament.