Arvind Seshan and Sanjay Seshan are from Pennsylvania.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: Two young Indian American brothers from Fox Chapel, Pennsylvania, recently took home the First Place Champion’s Award from the First Lego League Razorback Invitational at the University of Arkansas.
Arvind and Sanjay Seshan, aged 10 and 12, respectively, had to best teams from Japan, Korea, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Israel, Ireland, India, the Netherlands, Chile, Slovenia, and Spain in order to take top honors, which they did with aplomb, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
In addition to their first place win, they also garnered Second Place Robot Performance for their showing in the competition, which took place from May 14 to May 17.
The siblings’ team, called “Not the Droids You Are Looking For” in a nod to the famous line from the original “Star Wars” film, had previously won the Western Pennsylvania First Lego League Grand Championship earlier this year at La Roche College.
The boys also run a website, EV3 Lessons.com, which was developed as part of the 2014 First Lego League World Class Project season. They use it to teach people from around the world how to program the Lego EV3 robotics platform for competitions.
“We like to help other teams,” Sanjay told The Post-Gazette in January, noting that their website has enabled them to virtually visit countries around the world.
“We showed the team from Brazil the snow in our backyard, and they went crazy!” recalled Arvind, adding that he writes reports about all of the places he learns about while helping foreign teams program their Lego robots.
To date, the website has attracted nearly 10,000 users from 110 countries. The boys’ mother, Asha Seshan, said the lessons already have been translated into five languages.
According to the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, Arvind intends to become an inventor, and Sanjay wants to be a computer engineer.
“Good things happen if you work at it, believe in it and do the best you can,” mused their mother. “Even a little kid can make an impact on the world. It’s a nice lesson to learn. It’s not the age that matters.”