Nine kids from Croydon & Wallington

We’re flying to Mexico.

We meet every Sunday. Three years ago we didn’t know anything about robotics or coding. Now we’re going to compete at the FIRST LEGO League World Finals.

This is the story of how that happened.

FLL Worlds · Guadalajara · 27–30 May 2026

Start at the beginning → Back us today → T−20
Worlds 2026
Lord of the Bricks — UK National Knockout Champions 2026 in team kit
Mockup: Lord of the Bricks in sponsor-branded Team GB kit (illustrative — no sponsor confirmed yet)
Today With Sponsor
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Lord of the Bricks team — wide group shot Croydon & Wallington · UK Worlds 2026 · Guadalajara
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Hours of work this season
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Sundays missed in 3 seasons
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Pages of Kent's history searchable
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AI live on a real partner's website
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Years from FLL Explore to Worlds
Chapter 01 / Where it started
Three years ago

We didn’t know anything about robotics or coding.

The only LEGO we knew was the kind you stepped on at 6am.

Two of our parents — Loge, a doctor, and Karthic, an IT specialist — showed us a thing called FIRST LEGO League Explore. It’s a game where you build robots out of LEGO and they have to do tasks on a board.

We thought it sounded easier than maths homework.

We were wrong about that. But we kept going.

Three years and a lot of failed robots later, we are the team now. Esha, Anaisa, Guhan, Arvin, Sakthi, Flossie, Toby, Elliot, Aliaa. Still coached by Loge and Karthic. Still meeting every Sunday.

Chapter 02 / Where we’re flying
About Mexico

Right. About Mexico.

On the 27th of May we’re flying to Guadalajara, Jalisco, for the FIRST LEGO League International Open Championship. 90 teams. 30+ countries. Four days. One UK team.

That’s us. We’re the UK team.

We earned the seat. We won the Kent Regionals (twice). Then we won the UK National Knockout. We came second in the country on Robot Performance — we’ll come back to that one.

At Worlds, every team is judged on three things: the robot, an innovation project, and core values. Most teams turn up strong on one. Some on two. We’ve built all three from scratch over nine months. The next chapters are about each of them.

Last year a UK team won this. We’ve seen the video. We’d like to bring the trophy back.

KENT, UK GUADALAJARA 27–30 MAY 2026
Competing countries Lord of the Bricks · UK → Guadalajara
Chapter 03 / Sundays became a thing
The team

Sundays became a thing.

Nine of us. Two coaches who happen to be our parents. Different schools. Same Sunday.

We go to different schools across Croydon and Wallington. We don’t see each other much during the week. But every Sunday, we meet up. We’ve done that for three years.

This season alone: 502 hours, 96 sessions, zero Sundays missed. Not when there was a heatwave. Not when one of us was sick. Not when Loge got back from a work trip on Saturday night.

Loge is a doctor. Karthic is in IT. They’re our parents and our coaches — they’ll tell you they had no idea how robotics worked when this started either. We figured it out together.

We code in Pybricks. We plan in Notion. We argue on WhatsApp. We celebrate birthdays at McDonald’s. Three new members joined the team this year — we ran our own training sessions to bring them up to speed.

The team isn’t just a thing we do. It’s the thing we do.

01 / Esha
Esha
Portrait, eye-line camera, neutral background.
images/team/01-esha.jpg · 1200×1500
Esha
Captain & Innovation Lead
02 / Anaisa
Anaisa
Portrait, eye-line camera, neutral background.
images/team/02-anaisa.jpg
Anaisa
Robot Designer
03 / Guhan
Guhan
Portrait, eye-line camera, neutral background.
images/team/03-guhan.jpg
Guhan
Attachments Engineer
04 / Arvin
Arvin
Portrait, eye-line camera, neutral background.
images/team/04-arvin.jpg
Arvin
Research Lead
05 / Sakthi
Sakthi
Portrait, eye-line camera, neutral background.
images/team/05-sakthi.jpg
Sakthi
Lead Programmer
06 / Flossie
Flossie
Portrait, eye-line camera, neutral background.
images/team/06-flossie.jpg
Flossie
Mission Strategist
07 / Toby
Toby
Portrait, eye-line camera, neutral background.
images/team/07-toby.jpg
Toby
Testing & Iteration Lead
08 / Elliot
Elliot
Portrait, eye-line camera, neutral background.
images/team/08-elliot.jpg
Elliot
Quality & Consistency Lead
09 / Aliaa
Aliaa
Portrait, eye-line camera, neutral background.
images/team/09-aliya.jpg
Aliaa
Outreach & Presentation Lead
Coach
Coach 1
images/team/coach-01.jpg
Coach — Doctor

A parent. Learned robotics alongside the kids from FLL Explore onward. Insert name + short bio.

Coach
Coach 2
images/team/coach-02.jpg
Coach — IT Specialist

A parent. Helped wire up the AI infrastructure with the team. Insert name + short bio.

Chapter 04 / The robot
The robot we built

We named it
World Dominator.

Don’t laugh. We were 10.

This is our fourth robot. The first three taught us a lot — mostly by failing. We’ve had robots fall apart, refuse to turn left, get confused by their own code, and freeze on the start line. We’re not going to list every failure, but there were many. That’s genuinely how we got here.

World Dominator runs on Pybricks — real Python, not block code. Closer to how engineers actually write software. We combined 15 missions into 8 efficient runs. We built modular attachments that drop in without pins, custom gearboxes that trade speed for torque, a gyro sensor that holds a straight line on long runs, and a one-touch menu that auto-loads the next mission.

We tested every run more than 200 times. Our consistency target is 99%. After UK Nationals we made over 50 design and code changes based on failure analysis — which is a polite way of saying we kept finding things wrong.

At Nationals we scored 485. We’ve hit 540+ in practice since. Top of the field is 545.

The 485 was on a misaligned table — the calibration depth was wrong, and the robot was running blind on settings we’d built for a different setup. We were furious because we knew the robot could do better. We fixed it. The path to 545 is now mechanical, not magical.

Robot · Hero
World Dominator on White
Clean studio shot of the robot. Top three-quarter angle, soft shadow, white sweep background.
images/robot/world-dominator-hero.jpg · 1600×2000
Robot · Action
Mission Run · Animated GIF / Loop
Robot completing a mission on the FLL table. Top-down angle ideal. Loop ~6 seconds.
images/robot/mission-run.gif · videos/mission-run.mp4
545
Points target
8
Runs
4
Motors
200+
Test runs per mission
50+
Changes after Nationals
99%
Consistency goal
Attachment 01
Modular Drop-Lift
images/robot/attachment-01.jpg
01 / Modular drop-lift
No pins. Drops in. Lifts off.
Attachment 02
Custom Gearbox
images/robot/attachment-02.jpg
02 / Custom gearbox
Tuned for speed-torque trade-off.
Attachment 03
Gyro Drive
images/robot/attachment-03.jpg
03 / Gyro drive
Holds straight on long runs.
Attachment 04
One-Touch Mission Menu
images/robot/attachment-04.jpg
04 / Mission menu
Auto-loads next run on a single tap.
“We didn't just hand the new members a robot. We ran training sessions so every teammate was confident and valued.”
Chapter 05 / The AI we built with Ken
A real partner. A real problem.

We built an AI
for Kent Archaeological Society.

Not a school project. Not a fancy demo. A real tool, built for a real partner, solving a real problem.

Ken is one of our mentors — a retired archaeologist. He kept telling us about the Kent Archaeological Society: 150 years of journal records, over 10,000 pages of fieldwork, monuments, finds. Archaeologists, students, and the public would email them constantly because the archive was almost impossible to search.

So we asked: what if we built them an AI that could search all of it?

We didn’t want this to be another fancy AI thing built for the sake of it. We met the Kent Archaeological Society team multiple times. We talked to Jacob, Craig, and Andy — their digital and curatorial leads. We learned what archaeology actually is, what their users actually ask, and where the existing system actually broke. KAS isn’t a client of ours. They’re a partner. We solved their problem, not the one we wanted to solve.

What we built: three different AI personas inside one tool.

01

TobyThe Archaeologist

Speaks in technical terms. Returns excavation data, statistics, citations.

02

ElliotThe Public

Translates technical archives into local stories and historical facts.

03

AliaaThe Student

Makes Kent's history simple, fun, engaging. Includes a Surprise Button.

How it's built

Prompt engineering and RAG, end to end.

We built the prototype in Claude. Used Replit for the production build. Implemented prompt engineering with four layers — Persona, Scope, Guardrails, and Chain of Thought. Added a RAG system to make sure the AI only pulls from KAS-owned content. Added an AGUI module to fix slow response times.

It is officially live on the Kent Archaeological Society website. It has been featured in their newsletter.

We then went one step further. We built a Generic Source Code blueprint so any historical society in the world can deploy the same system on their own archives.

Try the live AI on KAS → Watch the demo Read the blueprint
  1. 01Prototype — built in Claude
  2. 02Production — built and deployed in Replit
  3. 03Persona layer — three voices, one engine
  4. 04Scope & guardrails — KAS-only content, no hallucinations
  5. 05Chain of Thought — structured reasoning prompts
  6. 06RAG — retrieves only from owned archive
  7. 07AGUI module — latency optimisation
  8. 08Generic blueprint — deployable to any historical society
“
This computer programme is no mere computer game, but a serious piece of work that will be of great value to Historians and Archaeologists alike.
Ken · Retired archaeologist & team mentor
“
They've shown how cutting-edge technology can help people make sense of historic records, monuments and excavations across Kent.
Jacob Scott · Digital Manager, Kent Archaeological Society
“
Seeing young people engage so deeply with our collections and translate that into a robotics and AI project is inspiring.
Andy Ward · Curator, Kent Archaeological Society
Chapter 06 / Other stuff we’ve done
Before this season

This isn’t our
first real-world build.

Robotics is the latest thing. Before that we’ve done microplastics, Parliament, Croydon. The pattern is the same: pick a real problem, do the work, ship it.

Last season’s project was about microplastics. We built educational games, ran sessions in schools, and reached over 3,000 people across the UK.

We got invited to the UK Houses of Parliament to present our work. We presented at the Croydon AI Summit. The Mayor of Croydon recognised us for STEM education impact.

The microplastics season taught us a hard lesson: building a good tool isn’t enough on its own. You need someone real who will use it. That’s why this year we did things in the opposite order — we found the partner (KAS) first, then we built the AI for what they actually needed.

We don’t disappear when the season ends. Whatever we build, the story keeps going.

Beyond · 01
UK Houses of Parliament
images/beyond/parliament.jpg
UK Houses of Parliament · Microplastics 2025
Beyond · 02
Croydon AI Summit
images/beyond/croydon-ai-summit.jpg
Croydon AI Summit · Mayoral Recognition
Beyond · 03
Schools Outreach Session
images/beyond/schools-session.jpg
Schools session · 3,000+ reached across the UK
Chapter 07 / How we got here
The short version

Kent Regionals → UK Nationals → Mexico.

Three years, in pictures. Primary school to the world stage. We watched the 2025 UK World Champion video on the way home from Nationals — that’s the bit that gave us the push to come back next.

2023
2023
FLL Explore
images/journey/2023-explore.jpg

FLL Explore

We started here, in primary school. Plastic bricks, big ideas.

2024
2024
FLL Challenge — Submerged
images/journey/2024-submerged.jpg

FLL Challenge — Submerged

Our first competitive season. Built a robot. Learned to code. Microplastics project reached 3,000+ people. Invited to UK Parliament.

2025
2025
Croydon AI Summit
images/journey/2025-croydon.jpg

Croydon AI Summit & Mayoral Recognition

Spoke at the AI Summit. Honoured by the Mayor of Croydon for our work in STEM education.

Sept 2025
SEP 2025
Unearthed Begins
images/journey/2025-09-unearthed.jpg

Unearthed Begins

Welcomed three new teammates. Started the season with eight-hour discussions with Ken, our retired archaeologist mentor.

Nov 2025
NOV 2025
KAS Partnership
images/journey/2025-11-kas.jpg

Partnership with Kent Archaeological Society

Met Jacob, Craig, and Andy. Found our real-world client.

Jan 2026
JAN 2026
AI Goes Live
images/journey/2026-01-ai-live.jpg

AI Goes Live

Multi-Persona AI Assistant officially deployed on the KAS website. Featured in their newsletter.

Feb 2026
FEB 2026
Kent Regionals
images/journey/2026-02-regionals.jpg

Kent Regionals

First place. Our second consecutive Kent regional title. 435 points on robot performance.

March 2026
MAR 2026
UK National Finals
images/journey/2026-03-nationals.jpg

UK National Finals

National Knockout Champions. Second in the UK on Robot Performance.

April 2026
APR 2026
Selected for Worlds
images/journey/2026-04-worlds-selection.jpg

Selected for Worlds

Officially representing the UK at the FIRST LEGO League International Open Championship Mexico 2026.

May 27–30, 2026
UPCOMING
Guadalajara, Mexico
Where we go next.
images/journey/2026-05-guadalajara.jpg

Guadalajara

Where we go next.

Chapter 08 / What it costs
The honest bit

Mexico costs
£30,000.

We’re a self-funded, out-of-school team. No school budget. No federation funding. Just nine families, two coaches, and a robot named World Dominator.

Getting eleven of us — nine kids and two coaches — plus the robot, the kit, and four days of competition entry to Guadalajara comes to about £30,000. We’ve listed exactly where every pound goes. No mark-up, no ‘admin’ line. Our parents are paying their own travel separately.

Line itemCost (GBP)
Flights (LHR–GDL, return, 11 travellers)£9,500
Accommodation (5 nights, group rate)£6,200
Ground transport (airport, daily venue runs)£1,800
Tournament registration & spectator badges£2,300
Robot, equipment, spares, shipping£1,400
Team kit (shirts, caps, banner, pit display)£2,500
Travel insurance (medical, equipment)£1,100
Pre-event prep (mock judging, table hire, materials)£900
Food & per diem£2,800
Contingency (10%)£1,500
Total£30,000

Every pound raised goes to the team. The parents fund their own travel separately.

This isn’t a school trip.
It’s the UK on the world stage. We’d like company.

Book a 20-minute call → See sponsorship tiers

T−20 DAYS · Funding window closes once we book flights & kit

We’ll write back from Mexico either way.

— Esha, Anaisa, Guhan, Arvin, Sakthi, Flossie, Toby, Elliot, Aliaa

Coached by Loge & Karthic

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