With laughter, conversations and the clatter of Legos echoing through the basement, a meeting of the Bionic Beasts hardly seems like a practice.

But the team of seven Karrer Middle School students is very serious when it comes to the FIRST Lego robotics league.

The team works together to construct and program a robot to do certain tasks on a board about the size of a ping-pong table. This year's theme is Smart Moves and the students must program a Lego robot to move around the board and perform different tasks, such as collecting hoops and maneuvering through the course.

"It's called Smart Moves because we find ways to get around challenges," said Gary Gao, one of the team's assistant coaches. "Each mission represents real-life transportation. There are things that represent traffic laws."

The Bionic Beasts aren't the only Dublin team trying to master the challenges of Smart Moves. Gao, who is also vice president of the Dublin Robotic Boosters, said there are more than 90 students from the four middle schools signed up for the league.

Teams began meeting in September. Gao said the first competition is early next month.

The FIRST Lego League has become so big at Dublin middle schools that Gao said the league asked Dublin to host a competition this year.

"This year, because we register so many kids, the regional (competition) couldn't host us all, so they asked us to host our own regional," he said.

Dublin will host its regional competition at Jerome High School on Dec. 12, Gao said.

The Bionic Beasts made it to the state competition last year. A few veterans remain on this year's team and think the Smart Moves challenge isn't as bad as its been in the past.

"The kids have risen to the challenge," coach Scott Hong said. "They learned so much it just appears to be easier. They have learned a lot over the past few years."

But there are other theories.

"I think it's slightly easier because the only types of real challenges are to get to places," said eighth-grader Daniel Hong, who acts as chief engineer for the team.

Pranav Kaza, another veteran team member, said this year's tasks do seem slightly easier. To the outsider, though, his job may not seem simple. Kaza is the chief programmer and creates a program on a laptop and uploads it to the robot.

"My brother taught me," he said with a shrug.

Seventh-grader Tom Gao has been in the league for two years and was also involved in a summer league. He's enjoyed meeting and working with new people, although he had other motives for joining.

"It seemed like something fun because I like Legos," he said. "And Legos plus robots seemed really fun."

The team's sole female member is newcomer Anuja Jayanti, who said she initially joined because the team was looking for more members, but now she wants to learn.

"It's fun but kind of difficult," she said. "I want to learn how to build the robot. I don't know anything about programming, but that's OK."