Competition Themes
The challenges for FLL are based on several different themes:
| Year | Theme | Number of participants | Number of teams | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1999 | First Contact | 9,500 | 975 | It focused around a group of astronauts stranded in a space station; missions included pulling a lever to allow the astronauts into a chamber and delivering oxygen (foam balls) to different sections of the playing field. |
| 2000 | Volcanic Panic | 15,000 | 1,540 | In this challenge, robots had to complete challenges prior to the eruption of a volcano, such as rescuing a stranded scientist, barricading a village from lava rocks, deploying a gas sensor, and retrieving crates of samples, among other volcano-related tasks. |
| 2001 | Arctic Impact | 18,500 | 1,902 | Robots had to complete tasks on an Arctic themed board such as retrieving medicine barrels, and rescuing minifigure scientists from polar bears. |
| 2002 | City Sights | 27,009 | 3,001 | Robots completed tasks such as clearing rocks off a soccer field, harvesting and delivering food loops, collecting toxic barrels, activating a windmill, and other city-related tasks. |
| 2003 | Mission Mars | 42,000 | 4,331 | Inspired by the year's Mars Rover mission, competing teams had to design and construct robots to solve a number of problems like removing rocks from a 'solar panel' to ensure a Mars base energy supply, collect 'soil/rock samples' from the Martian desert landscape, etc. |
| 2004 | No Limits | 50,000 | 5,859 | Centered around various robotic assistant systems for disabled persons, robots demonstrate how the systems are (hopefully) able to solve the given problems in a satisfying way. |
| 2005 | Ocean Odyssey | 60,000 | 7,501 | Involved marine-themed tasks such as mapping a sunken ship, deploying a research submarine, and cleaning up a shipping spill. |
| 2006 | Nano Quest | 90,000 | 8,847 | The challenge is developing anything using nanotechnology that improves or makes life easier from medicine to computers to the environment. |
| 2007 | Power Puzzle | 109,410 | 10,941 | The challenge is on alternative energy and features tasks such as moving power lines, fuel sources and planting trees. |
| 2008 | Climate Connections | 13,705 | The challenge focuses on the Earth's past, present, and future climate. Students must research a climate problem occurring in their area, find a solution, then share it. They also have to research another area which has the same problem as their area. Featured moving balls, bicycles, computers, setting up levees, etc. | |
| 2009 | Smart Move | 14,725 | The challenge centers around efficient transportation and teams are to solve a particular problem with the mode of transportation that they have chosen. The robot game includes activating access markers, collecting loops, toggling a lever to move a truck, avoid warning beacons, parking at one of two specified locations, etc. | |
| 2010 | Body Forward | 16,762 | Explore the cutting-edge world of biomedical engineering to discover innovative ways to repair injuries, overcome genetic predispositions, and maximize the body's potential, with the intended purpose of leading happier and healthier lives. The robot game includes moving bionic eyes to the upper body, separating red and white blood cells, opening a door, and more. | |
| 2011 | Food Factor | 18,323 | The 2011 challenge focused on improving the quality of food by finding ways to prevent food contamination. The missions included removing bacteria, delivering food, and refrigeration. | |
| 2012 | Senior Solutions | Improve and maintain the quality of life of senior citizens | ||
| 2013 | Nature's Fury |
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Famous quotes containing the words competition and/or themes:
“Knowledge in the form of an informational commodity indispensable to productive power is already, and will continue to be, a major—perhaps the major—stake in the worldwide competition for power. It is conceivable that the nation-states will one day fight for control of information, just as they battled in the past for control over territory, and afterwards for control over access to and exploitation of raw materials and cheap labor.”
—Jean François Lyotard (b. 1924)
“In economics, we borrowed from the Bourbons; in foreign policy, we drew on themes fashioned by the nomad warriors of the Eurasian steppes. In spiritual matters, we emulated the braying intolerance of our archenemies, the Shi’ite fundamentalists.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)