Fountain Hills Charter School officially entered the wild world of robotics this year, kicking off a First Lego League program that tasks students with constructing obstacle courses and then designing a robot that can tackle as many of those challenges as humanly (or robotically) possible.

The FHCS team, headed up by teacher Tricia Turnbull, is made of about 10 students from grades four through eight.

Turnbull said that the FHCS team goes by the name Eagle Bots, and that this past year’s competition revolved around the theme of “Learning.” The competitions, it turns out, aren’t just about building rolling contraptions.

“Our team chose to focus on how they could help adults learn new technology easier,” Turnbull said.

“Teams also design and build an autonomous robot that navigates a competition field.”

This being the first year for the team and only kicking off the action at the beginning of the fall semester, the Eagle Bots dove in to this year’s challenge a bit later than much of the competition, but that didn’t seem to slow these local kids down.

The team took part in a scrimmage in early November before going on to try their hand at the state qualifying tournament on Nov. 22.

While the team didn’t make it into the postseason, Turnbull said that plans are already being made for next year’s club, as interest in the First Lego League continues to grow.

Two of her students, Linden Olmstead (fourth grade) and Isaac Wilson (seventh grade), said they really enjoyed their first season with the club.

“I like using computers and stuff and I like Legos,” Olmstead said.

“I don’t have a bunch, but I like playing with them sometimes. I have a cool Lego car.”

Wilson said he heard about the club and, already being a fan of Legos and programming, it felt like a natural fit for him.

“I built my first Lego set when I was three years old and it was over 1,000 pieces,” he said.

As for the competition, Olmstead said that the process of building featured a lot of trial and error, seeing what worked and then finding new ways to improve it.

“The first month, we spent getting familiar with the programming,” Wilson added.

“We only had like two weeks to pull everything else together and I think we did surprisingly well.”

Aside from their presentation on “Learning,” the group too part in the play field missions with their very own robot.

The field is built of player-constructed missions, such as a door that needs to be closed, a soccer ball that needs to go into a net or an object that needs to be picked up and placed somewhere else on the field.

A robot does not need to complete all of the missions, but scores points for those it is able to finish.

Times are changing and robotics seems to be enjoying a growing trend of interest for younger generations. Wilson said this was something that caught him off guard once he stepped onto the competition floor and saw how many people shared his interests.

“I didn’t think there would be that many people who were interested in robotics, to be honest,” he said.

Looking back over this first season, Olmstead said his favorite part was building the play field and learning the coding.

“I enjoyed being part of a team, programming and working with others,” Wilson said.

“I also like that three of my best friends are in the club with me.”

Looking ahead, Olmstead and Wilson said they are very excited for next year’s competition, especially since they’ll have a lot more time to prepare this time around.

As for even further down the line, they both had an idea of what their “perfect robot” would be.

“I’d probably want to program a robot to tell me any info that I need,” Olmstead said.

“Either that or, if I was older and had the money to do it, I’d want it to build me a house or something.”

Wilson’s answer aimed a bit “higher.”

“I’d want to build a robot that can give humans the ability to fly,” he said.

“That would be really cool.”