Welcome to the Home of the Los Altos Robotics Community

2011 FLL Season Information

Announcements

• January 16, 2011: The Silicon Valley FLL Championship tournament has been confirmed for Saturday 2/18 at Independence High School in San Jose.
• January 11, 2011: The Silicon Valley FLL Championship tournament has been postponed from its original date of Jan 14, 2012.  They are targeting 2/18 or 2/4 as the new date.  I also added addresses to the list of tournaments in the December 21 announcement.  Michael
  
• December 21, 2011: There are three FLL Championship tournaments in January.  Going to a tournament is a lot of fun and youth can learn more about what it means to be on an FLL team.  If you go, I suggest visiting the pit area and practice tables to get a closer view of the robots and how the teams score points with them.
• Feb 18: Silicon Valley Championship at Independence High School, 1776 Educational Park Drive, San Jose (Postponed from Jan 14)
  
• Jan 22, 2012: East Bay Championship at Newark Memorial High School at 39375 Cedar Boulevard, Newark
• Jan 28, 2012: Peninsula Championship at Sequoia High School at 1201 Brewster Ave, Redwood City
• More information is at http://www.norcalfll.org/
• November 18, 2011: The tournament was great.  Thanks to the participants and volunteers that made it happen.  Results and awards are available for this and past tournaments on the FLL Competitions page.
  
• Sun, Nov 13, 2011:  Los Altos FLL Tournament. Download the tournament guide here.
  

• 1:00 pm - Opening ceremony
• 1:30 - 4:15 Robot challenge (16 teams make 3 attempts each at the Food Factor challenge)
• 4:30 - 4:45 FRC high school teams 114 (Los Altos) and 971 (Mountain View) demo the "big bots"
• 4:45 - 5:00 FLL "show & tell" demos from select teams
• 5:00 - 5:45 Awards and closing ceremony
  

• September 9, 2011: Here are the slides from the September 6 Parent Orientation meeting.  Thanks to Mike Murray for a great presentation and the Mountain View High School Spartan Robotics team for hosting this meeting.
• August 2011 Announcement Flyer: The Los Altos Robotics 2011 First LEGO League Flyer (PowerPoint version) advertises the availability of the FLL program to children in Los Altos and Los Altos Hills. It has all of the key dates and events for the 2011 season.  Feel free to distribute it to anyone you think might benefit from seeing it, such as potential team members and coaches.
• New 2011! What is FIRST video featuring Dean Kamen, Founder of FLL and i.am.FIRST: Science is Rock and Roll featuring will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas

Updated August 19, 2011:

• Open NOW! Team Registration is open at www.FirstLegoLeague.org
  
• Sunday August 14 I.am FIRST: Science is Rock and Roll event on ABC TV featuring Will.I.Am of Black Eyed Peas.
  
• Friday September 2 The 2011 Food Factor Challenge announced at www.FirstLegoLeague.org and www.usfirst.org
  
• Tuesday September 6 Parent Orientation meeting, 7:30 pm at Room 112,  Mountain View High School. Event sponsored by Mountain View High School 971 FRC Spartan Robotics team. See map here.  Presentation Slides in pdf formats.
  
• Wednesday September 7 Application for Los Altos Scrimmage opens at www.LosAltosRobotics.org.
• Early October Application for Bay Area tournaments opens at www.nocalFLL.org.
• Sunday October 23 Los Altos Scrimmage from 1:00 PM until 5:00 PM at Blach School located at 1120 Covington Rd, Los Altos, CA 94024. All visitors are welcome.
• Sunday November 6 Los Altos Share-a-thon at Oak Ave School located at 1501 Oak Ave, Los Altos, CA 94024. All visitors are welcome.
• Sunday November 13 Los Altos Tournament from 1:00 PM until 6:00 PM at Blach School located at 1120 Covington Rd, Los Altos, CA 94024. All visitors are welcome.
  

The Los Altos Robotics tournament is an official FLL qualifier tournament for Northern California (NorCal). To get involved you will need to organize your own team and register with Los Altos Robotics, NorCal FLL and the USFLL organization. Then you can sign up your team for tournament events.

For registration information to Los Altos Robotics, please visit the Participating in Los Altos Robotics FLL page first and then email MichaelLosAltosRobotics.Org or call Michael Schuh at (650) 965-8037 if you still have questions.  The Participating in Los Altos Robotics FLL page also has the "I Need a Team List" that you can use to find a team for your child.

For registration information with NorCal FLL, please visit www.norcalfll.org. For registration information with US FLL, please visit www.usfll.org.

DESCRIPTIONS OF UPCOMING LOS ALTOS FLL EVENTS

The scrimmage is our mid-season event to let kids practice running the robots under simulated tournament conditions and see what's really working. The scrimmage and tournament have completely independent registrations. The scrimmage is an informal event intended to support local area schools and community and you register with Los Altos Robotics. The tournament is an official FLL qualifier and therefore standard Norcal FLL registration procedures are used. The Share-A-Thon is an opportunity for kids to share their research project results with the community and get feedback for their presentations at the tournament. 

Los Altos Robotics runs the local FLL tournament and provides information for teams in the community. We do not organize teams but we do provide links to related web sites and have an "I need a team" program to help teams in the local community find other team members. The 2010 Parent Orientation presentation is useful. We also provide the TigerBots email list for local event announcements. Send an email to Michael Schuh to be added to this list.

The Los Altos Robotics 2011 First LEGO League Flyer (PowerPoint version) was used to advertise the availability of the FLL program to children in Los Altos and Los Altos Hills. This shorter text only announcement was given to the Los Altos school district office to be distributed to the Los Altos and Los Altos Hills students. Feel free to distribute them to anyone you think might benefit from seeing it, such as potential team members and coaches.

NorCal FLL is the official FLL organizing group in Northern California. They provide information on how to organize and coach teams. They also provide a central registration for all Northern California tournaments including Los Altos. They have a web site, community forum, and email announcement list at NorCalFLL.org , NorCalFLL Community . Make sure you read the NorCalFLL 2011 Schedule/Costs page, attend a 2011 Upcoming Coach Training and register for a Bay Area tournament when the registration opens in early October, 2011. Also pay attention to emails from norcalfll-announce@googlegroups.com to be notified of key events real-time to ensure everything is in order for your team. This registration status page shows the number of team registered for each of the qualifying tournaments and the teams and the tournaments they are registered for in Northern California in 2010.

FLL is a worldwide program with over 16,000 teams involved. The official web site is: FLL Worldwide . They run the official USA FLL team registration site and ship out all Challenge sets and FLL robot kits. For local teams, start with the Los Altos Robotics web site and the NorCalFLL web site to get instructions for organizing your team. You will be directed to the USA web site as needed.

Good luck. If you have any other questions feel free to contact: Michael Schuh MichaelLosAltosRobotics.Org, (650) 965-8037 (Home), or (650) 604-1460 (Work)

See what FLL is about in this video from the 2004 Los Altos local FLL tournament, No Limits.  (If you have trouble viewing it, try using FireFox or Google Chrome or installing a current version of the Flash player.)

We Ate The Mat Web Site:   with links to Open Source NXT Programming Environment.

Los Altos Geek Squad  video of the 2009 award winning robot

Click Here to let us know links to other FLL team web sites.

• FIRST LEGO League is for fourth grade through 14 year olds. The fall season runs from Sep to Nov.
• Botball is for Junior High and High School students and takes place in the Winter and Spring. Los Altos Community team had a great 2008 season. See the fun here with videos from the California and National tournament.
• FIRST High School Robotics is for High School students and also takes place in the Winter and Spring.
• Our FIRST FLL regional affiliate, Playing At Learning , coordinates Northern California FLL with over 250 teams every year. In addition, they run other smaller robotics programs too such as FIRST Tech Challenge and JR. FLL.

If you would like to promote FLL in Northern California, please make a donation as a corporate sponsor or individual, to the NCaFLL coordinator, Playing At Learning, a 501c non-profit corporation.

Tournaments are lots of fun for spectators. If a child may want to participate in the future, they can stop by the event for an hour to see what it is like. If you are already a participant at another venue, please do not video robots. If you would like to help run the FLL tournaments, please email or call at the contact information listed below. Participation is great fun and great way to give back to the community.

from Alex Woo for the 2010 Los Altos Robotics Scrimmage.

And videos from the 2009 and 2010 Los Altos Robotics Tournaments.

The 2010 season was great. Visit the season results and see a ranked list of overall scores, the match scores showing who played who on which table and at what time, and the scoring details for each team for each of their three runs.

Check out our FLL History page for what happened in past seasons at Los Altos and in NorCalFLL tournaments. We also have history of prior years including many videos.

Most robotics teams have fun, work hard, learn a ton, and demonstrate gracious professionalism. A few of our local area teams have also been fortunate enough to be recognized at some of the major state and national robotics tournaments. The Los Altos Robotics State and National Team Award Page recognizes those teams and we hope inspires future teams.

Los Altos Robotics was formed in 2004 to organize and promote robotics activities in Los Altos and surrounding areas. Los Altos Robotics board members have organized FLL robotics tournaments in Los Altos since 2001. This organization now contains a board of about 10 dedicated volunteers. If you want to volunteer, send one us an email and come to a board meeting. Meetings are open to the public. Click here to see the Los Altos Robotics board and a list of the upcoming board meetings.

For general questions, comments, or suggestions, please email WebmasterLosAltosRobotics.Org.

The Los Altos Robotics web site join and log in account is intended only for coordinators. If you are currently a member of the TigerBots email alias, you will receive the information you need in your email. If you have an account, you can login here and logout here. While you are logged in you can change your password with the password_form. If you have forgotten your password, the system will not be able to send it to you by email. You will have to contact an administrator (Michael Schuh) to have it reset.