LEWISTON — Koopa Troopa sat in the middle of the playing field with its lights blinking, a belly full of Frisbee disks just itching to be thrown.

Spruce Mountain High School sophomore Cloe Flagg, the captain of the driving team at Koopa Troopa’s controls, wasn’t concerned that her robot was misfiring.

“The arm that was designed to load the Frisbees just wasn’t working,” Flagg said. “But we have an hour now, and we’ll get it worked out.”

It was only the first practice Thursday afternoon for the Spruce Mountain Area Robotics Team at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee and the first time Koopa Troopa, the team’s robot, had been on the playing field since they finished their last match on March 9.

Flagg’s team made 12 changes to its robot Thursday morning — replacing proximity sensors, fitting in new rubber wheels to launch the Frisbees and redesigning the disk-collecting mechanism on the bottom, among other preparations.

Those changes meant they had to reprogram much of their robot’s software. Likely, there was a bug in there somewhere.

“We’ll find it,” said Dan Lemieux, coach of the Spruce Mountain team. “I firmly believe you learn more by failure than by success.”

The Jay-based SMART team is one of 38 like-minded, cucumber-cool, technical teams from across the East Coast filling the Androscoggin Bank Colisee for the first Pine Tree Regionals.

The event is drawing 38 teams of 40 students, coaches and mentors to Lewiston on Friday and Saturday. Six of the 38 teams will advance to the national championships in St. Louis, Mo., later this month.

Beginning in January, teams had a month to design and build robots that can throw Frisbee disks accurately into targets set around a 27- by 54-foot field. The harder the target is to reach, the better the score.

They have to contend with other robots, which can block and push opponents as they battle to collect and throw disks.

Finally, the robots have to climb to the top of a pyramid tower in the center of the playing field and power down, locking themselves into place. The higher they climb, the better the score.

Teams have to lock their robots up once the design deadline passes, and they don’t get to see them again until the day before their matches. And once the match is over, the robot gets locked up again — until the next match.

For most teams, the Pine Tree Regionals will be their second or third contest this season. That means they’ve all had time to plot out and design improvements to their robots — but not to install them and test them out.

“It’s always a work in progress,” Spruce Mountain coach Rob Taylor said. “Our last match, we were troubleshooting all the way through Friday. Some of these robots here are incredibly impressive, and they’re all troubleshooting too. It’s what everybody is doing, trying to make things better.”

Senior Jack Kim of Burlington Central High School in Ontario, Canada, said his team is doing the same thing.

“We’re still making some modifications,” Kim said. “Mostly it works great, but there are still modifications we can do. By the end of the day, we’ll be ready.”

Kim said he’s been building robots for competition since middle school.

“I’m planning to go for engineering, and I can see this applies to the real world,” he said.

Senior Chanel Morris of McDowell High School in Erie, Pa., said it has opened her mind.

“You learn a lot: hand tools, teamwork,” Morris said. “You are always going to need to know these things, and this is the best experience. It’s all learning.”

The point is to challenge the teens and promote science, engineering and math — but it’s also designed to promote goodwill. Teens wander the pit area, swapping pins, memorabilia and Facebook friend requests with new acquaintances from around the country.

“There is something about the program itself,” said Frank Merrick, acting director of FIRST Robotic Competition.”It’s hard to describe, but once people come and see what it’s like, it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement and the activity. They see how hard it is and they might say, ‘I could never do something like that.’ But once they come, you suck them in and put a wrench in their hand and they see what they can do.”

By SMART’s second practice less than two hours later, Koopa Troopa did what it was supposed to: fling Frisbee disks with precision and climb pyramids.

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