Lakota Robotics LLC

First Robotics competition-under strict rules, limited resources, and an intense six-week time limit, teams of students are challenged to raise funds, design a team brand, hone teamwork skills, and build and program industrial size robots to play a different field game against like-minded competitors. It's as close to real world engineering as a student can get. Volunteer professional mentors lend their time and talents to guide each team. Each season ends with an exciting "first" championship.

First tech challenge- guided by adult coaches and mentors, students develop stem skills and practice engineering princeiples (like keeping anengineering notebook), while realizing the value of hard work, innovation, and sharing ideas, the robot kit is reusable from year to year and can be programmed using a variety of languages, including java. Teams also must raise funds, design and market their team brand, and do community outreach for which they can win awards. Participants have access to tens of millions of dollars in scholarships. Each season concludes with super regional championships and exciting first championship.

First lego league- guided by two or more adult coaches, teams research a real-world problem such as food safety, recycling, energy, etc., and are challenged to develop a solution. They also must design, build, program a robot using lego mindstorms, then compete on atable top playing field. Participants apply science, technology, engineering, and math concepts (stem), plus a big dose of imagination, to solve a problem. Along their journey, they develop crtical thinking and team building skills, basic solutions with a dash of creativity to judges. They also practice the program's cpre values, which emphasize discovery, teamwork and good sportsmanship.