Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) will host on Saturday, Dec. 18, the 10th annual RoboNautica, the official state championship tournament of FIRST LEGO League (FLL), which showcases the engineering talents of hundreds of children ages 9-14 from across Massachusetts, the Northeast, and Jamaica. This year's tournament, which will be held from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. in Harrington Auditorium, features the theme "Body Forward," and is made possible by a generous gift from Raytheon Network Centric Systems. A total of 64 teams will compete.
Teams will create robots that simulate important challenges in biomedical engineering and medicine that involve repairing, healing, or improving the body. With six competition tables, the action at RoboNautica is non-stop. To qualify for RoboNautica, all participating teams gave successful performances earlier this year at one of five regional tournaments held throughout the state.
WPI is the only school in the nation to offer bachelor's, master's, and doctoral programs in robotics engineering. By hosting RoboNautica and several other annual robotics-related events, WPI has also become the proving ground for hundreds of would-be robotics champions in New England.
