Category: 2011 FLL – FoodFactor

[May 2012] Team Igutech with U.S. Surfing Champion Stephen Moore in Carlsbad, CA. Check out Surfin Fire Surf School for details.

[May 2012 HG] Team Igutech participated at the North America Open FLL Tournament at Legoland, CA. A big THANK YOU to all our supporters!

The FIRST Lego League Project challenge this season was to investigate our food and find one way to improve its safe delivery. Some questions every team had to consider were: Where does our food come from? How is it grown? Where has it been? Who handled it? How did it get to our kitchen cupboard? Who protected it along the way? How did they prevent spoiling and contamination? How did they decide which food was good and which was spoiled or contaminated?

To find out about all these threads, our team (The Igutechs) conducted a lot of research. We started out with a comprehensive food safety survey at the DaVinci Science Center, we pulled up all sorts of online resources, discussed and brainstormed with teachers and parents and finally, we consulted two experts in this field: The Food and Human Safety Coordinator in our local Wegmans supermarket and the Director of a commercial kitchen serving food to more than 3,000 students daily.

The FLL Food Factor Challenge required every team to:

• Identify a food-contamination related problem
• Create an innovative solution
• Share the solution with the community
• Create a 5-minute presentation

Team Igutech would like to thank you for your outstanding support! A BIG THANK YOU to all our friends worldwide who have voted for our CleanBox idea over the past 30 days. With your help, and your help only, we accumulated an incredible 11952 votes, which placed us within the top six percent of all 261 entries. Stay tuned for more news about our CleanBox….

Have you ever felt that hand washing is kind of boring and annoying? You are not the only one…..
Do you always wash you hands before handling food or eating with your fingers?

• Fact is almost everyone knows that hand washing is important but still it is skipped more often than not because it is inconvenient or there is no sink in sight…
• Fact is also that millions of times every year food becomes contaminated and people get seriously sick from food borne illnesses.

We, FLL Team #6 (The Igutechs) feel we found a great solution: The Cleanbox (U.S. patent pending – #61588938). A device that makes hand washing actually fun! How do we make a boring chore like hand washing fun? Well, as soon as someone approaches the CleanBox (a high-tech sink – something between a dishwasher and a video game) the device comes to life and starts playing a random video clip. For example, a YouTube video or something from a school data base. At the same time, the Cleanbox dispenses a soft stream of warm water and soap at the right times. As long as the person washes her hands, the video continues playing. In addition, there are light effects (like color changing LEDs) that light up the water. Once the hand washing cycles is finished, hot air drys your hands… As you can see, the basic idea is to reward the user with a pleasant experience (video, light, sound, perfectly soft water stream,….) instead of demanding that you MUST wash your hands…

The device can easily installed in regular rest rooms where they would replace sink, soap dispenser, dryer, etc. In additon, our CleanBoxes could be installed close to places where food is served or consumed, for example in school cafeterias, commercial kitchen, near lunch buffets, etc. Since the cleanBox is enclosed except the opening for the hands, water splashing won’t be a problem.

Thank you again for your interest in our team and the CleanBox idea. Your support allowed us to participate successfully at the FLL Global Innovation Award. Online voting is now closed, however, w’d always love to hear from you. Send us a note through the ‘Contacct Us’ link on the left.

Here’s a video of our Cleanbox!

FIRST Lego League Team #6, The Igutechs, wins the 1st place Champions Award at the Conrad-School-of-Science tournament. The team also scored highest points in the robot game and was awarded 1st place in Robot Performance.

A huge Thank You to all our supporters!

Ferdi and Stewart win our 2nd Igutech -SumoBot Challenge

[Lehigh Valley; May 2, 2011] Team Igutech registered as Team #6 to participate in the 2011 FLL season ‘Food Factor’.

Can FIRST® LEGO® League teams improve the quality of food by finding ways to prevent food contamination?  In the 2011 Food Factor Challenge, over 200,000 9-16* year olds from over 55 countries will explore the topic of food safety and examine the possible points of contamination our food encounters – from exposure to insects and creatures, to unsterile processing and transportation, to unsanitary preparation and storage – then find ways to prevent or combat these contaminates.  In the Food Factor Challenge, teams will build, test, and program an autonomous robot using LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT to solve a set of Food Safety missions as well as research, develop, and share their innovative food safety solutions.  Throughout their experience, teams will operate under FLL’s signature set of Core Values.