From left, Green Hole Lego teammates Owen Musser, Julie Kong, Casey Kong and Joe O'Keefe work together to modify the team robot to run on the competition course. The team of Lawrence fourth- through seventh-graders, which also includes Kellar Musser, won a regional Lego competition for its age group last month in Kansas City, Mo., and earned a trip in April to the championships in Houston.

Wearing a blue T-shirt and matching top hat bearing the Green Hole team logo, Casey Kong explained why a Lego League robot wasn’t yet performing its programmed tasks on the tabletop course set up on the second floor of his family’s home.

“What’s happening is it’s waiting to calibrate our gyro-sensors,” he said at a team work session last week.

Seconds later, the robot scooted around the tabletop, stopping to perform such programmed tasks as flipping a plastic Lego manhole cover. The team’s robot runs three different missions on the course. The busy hands of Casey and teammates Julie Kong, Kellar Musser, Owen Musser and Joe O’Keefe modify the robot’s base chassis for each mission.

Casey and Owen said the Green Hole team of five Lawrence fifth- through seventh-graders scored 245 out of a possible 535 points Jan. 22 in the robot competition, on its way to winning a 46-team FIRST Lego League regional competition in Kansas City, Mo. The second-place regional team was Lawrence Lego Mafia, of Raintree Montessori School. To get to the regional, the teams first competed in one of five qualifying competitions, which drew more than 200 teams from the Kansas City metropolitan area.

Green Hole team member Julie Kong sets out the trophies the team won at Lego League competitions, including one for its first-place finish in a recent Kansas City, Mo., regional tournament that earned it a spot in the April championship in Houston, Texas.

Owen said the team wants to improve its robot score when it competes April 18 through 21 in Houston, Texas, at the FIRST Lego League Championship. But the robot course is not the team’s strength, nor the reason it won the regional competition.

Developing Ripple

“We really won because of our project,” Owen said.

Robotics may be the best known component of Lego competitions, but it is only one of three categories that determine team scores. Judges also award points by how well the Lego teams display the core values of the competition and on a project that challenges teams to develop engineering solutions to problems they identify. This year, the theme of the competition is hydrodynamics, or the ways people find, transport, use and dispose of water.

The Green Hole team identified the problem of unneeded water consumption.

“The first problem is we can’t understand our water usage in real time,” Casey said. “So we developed Ripple. It shows water use through a series of sensors.”

Ripple can connect to faucets and spigots as well as monitor water use through the power outlets of washing machines and dishwashers, Casey said. The name Ripple plays on the water theme and the spreading benefit of teaching children to conserve water.

“Kids use water more than adults,” he said. “If you target them when young, they will take those good habits with them when they get older.”

Right now, Ripple and its associated app exist only as mock-ups, team member Julie said. Although not required, the team wants to have working models for Houston.

A good deal of research and development went into Ripple, Owen said.

Kellar Musser looks at videos for the Green Hole's presentation at last month's Kansas City, Mo., Lego League regional championship. The team of five Lawrence elementary and middle school students won the regional championship for its age group and will now compete in the championship in Houston, Texas.

“We did a lot of research on how water is used every day,” he said. “We went to the Lawrence water and wastewater plants and interviewed Kristen Webb, the Lawrence utility billing manager.”

The students also interviewed a software developer and a patent attorney, teammate Joe said. The software developer and judges at the Kansas City competition suggested the team look into patenting Ripple.

Old friends

Among the core values judged in the competition are the equal participation of all team members in its activities. Teamwork comes easy for the Green Hole team. The three boys, Casey, Owen and Joe, have been friends since kindergarten at Cordley Elementary. Two years ago, they were teammates in a Lego competition with a solid waste theme, which was the origin of the Green Hole team name. For their project, the boys introduced a recycling program at the Cordley cafeteria, which reduced waste by 50 percent and is still in use, said Becky O’Keefe, mother of team member Joe and a Green Hole coach.

The team finished second at the Kansas City regional two years ago and competed in an international runner-up competition. Last year, the team was broken up when Casey’s father, K.C. Kong, an associate professor in the University of Kansas Department of Physics and Astronomy, took a yearlong sabbatical in Pittsburgh, Pa. Casey, now a seventh-grader at Southwest Middle School, and Owen and Joe, both seventh-graders at Liberty Memorial Central Middle School, reunited at a youth science and technology event in August.

They decided to team up again, adding Casey’s sister, Julie, a fifth-grader at Quail Run Elementary, and Owen’s sister, Kellar, a fourth-grader at Cordley Elementary, to the team.

Since then, they’ve spent at least two evenings a week working together on their Lego League project. It takes a lot of time to build the robots and flesh out the project, Joe said. They also have to rehearse the skit they perform at competitions.

“It’s about an elderly time traveler who has his water turned off because of an unpaid bill,” he said. “He travels back in time to meet his younger self and learns how to conserve water with Ripple. So when he returns to his own time, his water is still on.”

The five team members know they will have to step up their game for the Houston competition.

“There will be over 90 teams there from the United States and other countries,” Casey said. “We are expecting many, many good teams.”