Solana Beach robotics team Code Crunchers wins top award with ‘Pack Again’ app

The Code Crunchers, a Solana Beach-based middle school robotics team, took home the Champion’s award at the FIRST Lego League (FLL) SoCal Robotics Championships at Legoland recently. They will advance to the FLL World Festival in St. Louis, MO in 2016.

The FLL SoCal Championship drew 375 teams from five counties in Southern California.

“Out of an intense competition ... this team stood out among all of them…. They cracked the code and crunched the competition,” said head judge George Chen.

The Champion’s award is given to the team that excels in the quality of their research and project presentation, their ability to work as a team, solve problems, demonstrate respect and gracious professionalism and also achieve a high score in robot performance.

For the project portion of this year’s FLL challenge — Trash Trek — the Code Crunchers researched what happens to the materials people use when moving. To avoid having these materials sent to landfills or to other countries for recycling, the team designed an app “Pack Again” that helps connect people who need moving materials with those who are trying to get rid of them.

The Code Crunchers team, made up of seventh graders has been invited to attend the FLL Trash Trek World Festival taking place in St. Louis, Missouri on April 27-30, 2016. They will be one of the 108 teams attending, representing more than 29,000 teams from over 80 countries who participated in FLL tournaments during 2015. The World Festival is a global celebration of the FLL Trash Trek season.

To find out more about the Code Crunchers and their “Pack Again” app, please visit www.codecrunchers.org.