David Montgomery | Capital Journal staff

PIERRE — With a crowd of peers and parents looking on, Riggs Sanchez carefully positioned a robot he had  helped build on an obstacle course and pressed the start button.

With a whir of its electric motor, the robot rolled forward on its tires and, after a foot, turned on its own to follow a black path.

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But after another foot of progress, something went wrong — the robot turned too much, and instead of passing neatly under a bridge of Legos it smashed into the trusses, knocking it down.

With groans, one of the children reached out to pick up the robot — and carry it off to a nearby laptop, ready to revise its programming and try again.

Sanchez was just one of dozens of local middle school students gathered at the Pierre Mall Thursday evening for a test run of their self-made, self-programmed Lego robots. After completing the evening of trial and error, the four local teams of students hope to compete in a statewide tournament January in Sioux Falls.

Despite robots that seldom did everything their school-age programmers wanted them to, the children said they were having a blast.

“It’s fun and creative and tests our minds,” said Garrit Tronvold, 13.

“It’s pretty cool — and it’s complicated,” said Hannah Becker, 11.

At the South Dakota FIRST Lego League tournament in Sioux Falls, students will be judged not only on how well their robot performs on a 12-mission obstacle course but how well team members work together and how they explain what they’ve done.

“It stimulates their interest in science, math, engineering and technology,” said Alan Swanson, the South Dakota partner for the FIRST Lego League. “But it also teaches them how to be part of a team and how to solve very difficult problems.”

The four local teams are organized in part through the South Dakota Discovery Center & Aquarium. Discovery Center executive director Kristie Maher said she hopes to organize more teams next year because the Lego robotics are both fun and creative.

“They’re learning to work as a team. They’re learning what programming is. They’re learning some engineering concepts and some mechanical concepts,” Maher said. “This is just really full of learning opportunities.”

Julia Jares, 13, said the competition is inspiring her to think about possible careers.

“It can prepare us for certain jobs like building or engineering,” Jares said.

All four teams had working, programmed robots after just a couple weeks of preparation.

“The teams have only been working at it for a couple weeks, so the level they’re at is outstanding,” said Jane Stewart, a volunteer judge of Thursday’s scrimmage.

There are 26 other teams around the state, and Swanson said he’s hoping to recruit more next year.

After Thursday’s results, Maher said she was most struck by the children’s resilience.

“I’m very impressed with their patience,” she said. “You could see that everything didn’t work out every time — and they just picked it up, went back, reprogrammed and tried again.”