Last year a team of nine students, The Dragons, arrived to RNAS Culdrose to take part in and experience the FIRST LEGO League. Far from being daunted, they embraced every opportunity and came away with an award for the Rising All-Star team – one which the judges ‘expect great things from in the future‘. Twelve months later (and now known as Jelly Friends) those same students returned to take part for a second year.
So the question is, did they deliver on that lofty expectation this time around? Well, read on and find out for yourself!
Innovation Project
Jelly Friends have spent the last six months working tirelessly on their Innovation Project, narrowing it down to a very specific problem: over half of the students at Penpol School said they were scared to go in the ocean in case they got stung by a jellyfish.
The thing is though, most jellyfish are absolutely harmless – just ask Evangeline! So the project took shape, the team would find a way to let swimmers know if the jellyfish nearby were safe, or if they might be a cause for concern.
Over the course of the project, they researched lots of different ideas before settling on a wristband which lights up red or green depending on if the jellyfish is a friend or not. This is then powered by underwater cameras linked to a Machine Learning project which Molly has coded in Scratch and Machine Learning for Kids.
Combined, this created Sting Safe and the team presented their idea to the judges at Culdrose. In fact, they were joined by more than the normal amount of judges as some other people got wind of what was happening and wanted to see for themselves.
During the presentation, Jelly Friends were joined by three visitors from Google Cloud who were at Culdrose to demo their own Machine Learning software. To say they were impressed by the team would be quite an understatement!
You can see the project in action by watching Molly explain it in this video:
Despite all the extra people in the room this didn’t prove a challenge for Jelly Friends who delivered their presentation in a confident and fun way for the judges, resulting in them getting nearly a perfect score for their presentation – a staggering 39 points out of 40!
39 points
out of a total of 40
The judges shared that they enjoyed their “in depth research whereby the team consulted lots of experts” and that their “use of Machine Learning was very impressive“. They were also impressed with how Jelly Friends were so “focussed on the problem itself and the impact of their solution“.
Robot Design
After sharing their Innovation Project the second presentation was all about the design of their robot and how the coding works. For this presentation the team were well prepared by sharing their collaborative Freeform board with the judges.
This document is something the Jelly Friends have been working on since September and documents their process from building the robot, testing the first missions and developing and refining the attachments that make the robot complete different tasks.
Their Freeform board is quite massive and has really shown just how much time and effort the team have put into their project this year. Using this helped the judges really see all of the progress they’ve made as well as the difficulties the team faced along the way.
This year the team have really refined their robot to make it more reliable, accurate and powerful. Using techniques like creating a launch area guide using Duplo meant they didn’t have to learn individual lineups for each mission whereas using coloured lights between different stages of their code helped the problem solving that always happens when missions don’t quite go to plan.
32 points
out of a total of 40
The judges comments for this part of the presentation praised the teams “evidence of strategy, testing and iteration” of their robot, especially the “use of their troubleshooting light” which was implemented in their code. A real highlight though was how the Jelly Friends “addressed areas of improvement” from their robot last year, showing development and new learning over the course of this season.
Robot Games
The Robot Games is probably the most intense part of the competition, as you only get three attempts to show just what your robot is capable of. Programs that run perfectly in school will likely fail under the pressure of competition, and weird issues will arise that simply couldn’t be predicted. That said, every team is in the same boat, and it’s all to play for!
Jelly Friends had their first Robot Games match nice and early and were full of quiet confidence as the countdown rang out. 3, 2, 1, LEGO! And then, quite frankly, it all went wrong!
Each of their meticulously planned missions either failed a little bit or failed spectacularly, resulting in them having to rescue the robot from the game table several times – losing points along the way. When everything goes to plan, they can usually get a score approaching three hundred, but after match one, they were left with barely half that – 145 points.
Practice time followed and a chance to try to decompress and understand what went wrong. The team believed the lineups were to blame, resulting in the robot getting stuck in places it shouldn’t have been stuck. Changes were made, and the second round was a chance for redemption.
Or at least, that was the plan. Unfortunately, the second run, despite starting stronger than the first, also turned into a nightmare relatively quickly. Again, the robot got stuck, crashed into mission models, and generally didn’t work as it was programmed to work. More points were lost by having to retrieve the robot, and a score of 160 was eventually posted to the scoreboard.
Could it be that after so many months of building, coding, refining, testing, and improving that the robot was going to be where it all came unstuck for Jelly Friends? Well, if you think that, then you’ve clearly underestimated this team!
In a truly remarkable show of resilience and determination, the four Robot Engineers decided to spend their lunch time debugging and refining the code for their robot. They realised the issue was with the gyroscope and set about correcting the problem. It took a good twenty minutes, but the team felt confident that they’d managed to fix the problem. Once that was done they even had time to adapt one of their robot attachments to improve its reliability.
And the reward for their effort? The final round proved to be the dream outcome – a perfect round where every single mission worked exactly according to plan. Finally, all of their months of coding and practice paid off and they achieved a simply staggering score of 290 points, much to the delight of everyone around – as you can see in the video here.
This set an incredibly high bar for other teams to meet and it was only in the final run of the day when their score was surpassed by Darite Primary, who managed to get an unbelievable 305 points – well done Darite!
145
Round 1
160
Round 2
290
Round 3
Robot Games
The Jelly Friends achieved the second highest score of the day in the Robot Games with a fantastic score of 290 points.
Next Steps
Cornwall LEGO League: 1st Place
The Jelly Friends came first overall on Day 2 of the 2025 Cornwall Regional Finals and now progress to the UK National Finals in Harrogate!
They now have several weeks to refine their robot and presentations ahead of competing on the National stage!
Photo Gallery
You can click on any photo in this gallery to view it full size
