Spain recently hosted Europe’s biggest robotics event for youngsters, the European Robotics Festival. In this event 5 Junior FIRST LEGO League teams formed by children aged 6 to 9 presented their projects and models; 17 teams made up by 17 to 23 year-olds from Spain, Russia, the Netherlands and the United States took part in the first international FIRST Tech Challenge; and 33 FIRST LEGO League (FLL) teams formed by youngsters aged 10 to 16 took part in the Grande Finale of FLL Spain.

FLL Spain is part of an international robot-building competition for youngsters held in simultaneous rounds around the world. The 4-to-10 member teams have to design and build programmable robots from LEGO parts, preparing for the competition for 10 weeks beforehand under the eye of an adult coach. GMV is the sole sponsor of FIRST LEGO League in Spain, supplying resources for holding all the knock-out rounds.

Responding to this year’s "Senior Solutions" challenge, the competing schoolchildren were encouraged to study the obstacles faced by ‘seniors’ (adults aged 60 plus) and seek groundbreaking solutions to improve their quality of life and meet daily challenges like getting around, keeping in contact with their environment or staying fit. The schoolchildren competed in two categories: robot building against the clock and presentation of the scientific research project.

The 2012-2013 competition involved 23 knock-out rounds in Almería, Barcelona, Burgos, Cádiz, Canary Islands, Córdoba, Basque Country, Extremadura, Girona, Granada, Huelva, Jaén, León, Lleida, Madrid, Málaga, Navarre, Murcia, Reus, Seville, Valencia and Vic with 500 teams and over 4500 students, followed by the Grand Finale in Tarragona with the 33 winning teams from the knock-out rounds.

The Viaró team from FLL Barcelona was the outright winner of this year’s grand finale, winning the GMV First Prize, and has now decided to go on to the World Festival to be held in San Luis (USA) from 24 to 27 April 2013.

The runners-up, Mechatronic Ants from FLL Navarre, and the third-place team, Los XD from FLL Seville, will participate in the Open European Championship to be held in Paderborn (Germany) from 7 to 10 May 2013.