FARMINGTON — Smart Fun Engineers, a FIRST LEGO League team from private school Smart Fun Learning Adventures, left for Houston, Texas, to represent Maine at the world competition Wednesday-Saturday.

The veteran team scored highest in robot performance at the 2022 Maine State Championship FIRST LEGO League Challenge held Dec. 3 at Spruce Mountain High School in Jay. The team also won the Champion’s Award at that competition. This is the fifth time students from the school have won the state league competition.

Brett Allen stands beside this year’s robot game table April 11 at Smart Fun Learning Adventures, a private school in Farmington. Allen is part of Smart Fun Engineers, a FIRST LEGO League team representing Maine at the world competition in Houston, Texas. Pam Harnden/Livermore Falls Advertiser

Eight of the team members and one from the rookie team that also competed in December were to be in Houston, team adviser Monica Allen said April 11. The team had taken a break from FIRST LEGO to concentrate on a math competition, and just started working on it again the previous week, she said.

Practice rounds were to be held Thursday and Friday, with the actual robot matches on Friday, and awards ceremonies set for 1-3:30 p.m. Saturday, according to the FIRST website. The site notes that 108 teams are competing this year.

When asked what team members were looking forward to, Brett Allen said, “The competition in Texas, you know, just to have the experience,” he said.

“The cultural experience that they’re looking for too is pretty impressive, with the diversity of teams that end up all converging (from) different countries,” Monica Allen said.

“It’s really interesting to see the different ideas that other students, other teams come up with and see how they think about (this year’s challenge) compared to how we think about it,” she said.

FIRST is an acronym: For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. The league’s theme this year is “Superpowered” and deals with sustainable energy. Teams use teamwork, fun, inclusion, discovery, impact and innovation — FIRST Core Values — to develop a robot to complete missions during the robot games and create an innovation project solution that addresses sustainable energy.

In the robot games, “one of the reasons our team can accomplish so much is because of how modular our design is,” Monica Allen said. “We have a main robot and then we have attachments that we take on, take off the robot. And so, each group can focus on attachments that are specific to their missions. By breaking it up that way, they’re able to accomplish quite a bit.”

The team’s innovation project deals with healthier energy solutions.

In a November interview, member Quin Ryan said they were looking at where energy is wasted in the home and ways to recycle it.

On hot summer days, it takes a lot of energy to keep things in the refrigerator cold, Brett Allen said then. The idea is to take hot air from the compressor and turn it into energy using a peltier plate, he said. A peltier plate is a thermal control module that has both warming and cooling effects.

Dryer vents, refrigerators and other appliances produce heat, he said during the recent interview. The prototype they have developed could save four kilowatt-hours per year, Brett Allen said.

“The home has areas where heat is wasted, is released into the atmosphere,” Monica Allen said. “The kids are trying to recapture some of that wasted heat, recycle it into energy.”

Having to remember everything was a challenge mentioned by team member Autumn Decker.

Working as a team was a good challenge, Brett Allen stated.