Second Saturday Robot Challenge Invitation!

Second Saturday Robot Challenge Series

First Challenge: May 10

Future dates – mark your calendar! June 14, July 12, August 9.

On the second Saturday's of the month, May through August, our FLL team is hosting a Robot Challenge Series from 10am-2pm (bring a lunch!). Each Saturday will feature robot games, and more importantly, a show-and-tell period where the kids can share their ideas about how to best solve the challenges. There will also be time for revising programs and adjusting robots in between runs against the challenge(s), and of course, time to play.

You are invited to bring your robot ready to compete, or just to come and watch and learn during the show-and-tell and hang out with the other kids. There are two games for the May 10^th date, described on the next two pages.

Details:

10am-2pm

Stephanie Ozenne's house

(call or e-mail for directions)

RSVP  stephanie (at) ozenne.com or (801) 568-7809

Game #1: Ping Pong

In this game of ping pong, your robot is the ball!

Game Specifications:

This game will be played on a standard FLL game table, on the white back of an old FLL mat. The mat has click-lock from a previous robot game on it, so it will not be perfectly flat but is mostly flat.

There will be two blue lines running across the short length of the table, made from 1” blue painter's tape, spaced 36 inches apart. The robot will start near one of the lines. The goal of this game is for the robot to drive back and forth between the two lines. The robot doesn't have to completely cross a line, any part of the robot passing over any part of the line counts as reaching that line.

Points:

Three points will be awarded each time the robot reaches a line (not including the initial line when the robot is first starting out), up to a maximum of 30 points. During the run, if the robot goes off course and crashes into a side wall, the run will end immediately. If the robot is intentionally squaring against the wall, the run will continue. Additionally, a time bonus of 10 points will be awarded to the fastest robot to 30 points, 8 points to the second fastest, 6 points to the third fastest, 4 points to the fourth fastest, and 2 points to the fifth fastest.

Game #2: Find the Pass!

Your robot needs to traverse an avalanche prone mountain pass that is just pass a shallow river that your robot can easily cross.  Frequent avalanches change the terrain, so you never know where the robot will be able to get through. Your robot will start its trip on the far side of the river at a location you will specify (before knowing where the passes will be).

Game specifications:

The playing field is fairly flat and matte white. The "river" will be a strip of 1" blue painter's tape run across the short length of the table. The "pass" will be a 13" gap between unfinished 2x4s set so they're 3.5" high. The 2x4s are 8" long and lined up to make a complete wall across the short length of the table, except for the 13" gap. The 8” wall segments will be rearranged to change the position of the pass between runs. They will be click-locked to the table and are fairly sturdy, but they will probably fall over if rammed hard enough. There will be click lock on the table in the area of the pass that the robot may touch. There will be two walls with "passes" in them, randomly placed. There will be 24" from the river to the first pass, and 24" between the first and second passes.

Points:

The robots will have a maximum of 2 minutes to complete this task. 15 points will be awarded for each pass that the robot finds. “Finding” a pass consists of getting any part of the robot past the front plane of the wall in the area of the pass. Additionally, there will be 10 points awarded to the fastest robot to find both passes, 8 points awarded to the second fastest robot, 6 points to the third, 4 points to the fourth, and 2 points to the fifth. In the event that no robot finds both passes, these time bonuses will be awarded to the robots that find the first pass the fastest.

Finding Base

Yesterday Stephanie (our coach) posed a challenge to us to program our robot to find base from any random point on the game board.  Eden & Emmett made a program that was successful in doing that.



-Damek

Strategy and Progress Towards the Championship!

Today was our first meeting between the qualifying tournament and the State Championship tournament. First, we set some goals for what we want to do before the championship.  We plan to make a Core Values introduction script for that judging session, and our new goal for the robot game is to score 300 or more points.  We scored 238 at our qualifying tournament.


We assigned "facilitators" to each task to improve communication and teamwork, and to transfer more responsibility to the team members for making progress.

Core Values Introduction
Emmett and Damek came up with a basic outline for the introduction, and the rest of the team will write their lines as homework this week. 

Robot Game
Luke and Kenny and Eden worked on the robot today.  Working together, they got the man by the house captured and brought to base.  When he is delivered to the red zone, we get 66 more points, which puts us over 300!  We are now thinking about doing another mission as well.  For homework this week everyone is thinking about which missions we should consider trying to solve next.

Qualifying Tournament

                                                 2013 - 2014 Qualifying Tournament

by Kenny (team member)    

Parade

                                  We had a good time marching in the parade with our silly hats!

                                                                   Robot Game

On the first round our robot went haywire but we still scored good.
At the beginning of the second round some wires weren't all the way in and the robot had some problems but it was our best round.


 


                                                                            The end

At the announcing of the teams who would be going to state we found out that we would go to state.  We are so happy that we are going to state.

Posters, Robot & a Mission

At wednesday's meeting we broke up into groups of 2 and 3.  One group, which consisted of Emmett, Eden & myself (Damek) worked on our core values and project posters

and the other group, which consisted of Kenny & Luke, worked on getting the robot to drive straight.

Halfway through the meeting Eden and Luke decided to switch groups, and Kenny & Eden worked on the pets mission part of the robot game

while Emmett, Luke & I continued to make progress on the posters.

When Straight Isn't Straight

Today we were working on the ambulance mission, which is just a long, straight path out and back to base.  We discovered that the big problem was that our robot was pulling to the right even though we were telling it to drive straight.

We tried switching the wheels around, and using another "identical" tire, but it still pulled right.  We decided that the motors must be the source of the problem, but we only have two EV3 motors, so we have to make them work.

Using the move-steering block, we started telling it to turn very slightly left instead of going straight.  We still had trouble getting it to go straight - it was still pulling right.  Then we realized that the battery power was very low, so we stopped working to charge the robot.  In competition, our robot will be fully charged, so we want to do these tests under the same conditions.

When it's charged again, we'll try to find turn values that make it go straight with the move-steering block.  We may also try the move-tank block with slightly different motor powers for the two motors.

Meeting Bruce Tremper of the Utah Avalanche Center

The past couple weeks we've been trying to get our project finished up.  Today we finished the posters we'll hold during our project presentation and then went to the Natural History Museum where Bruce Tremper was giving an avalanche talk. 

 

There were a lot of people there to listen to him talk about avalanches!

 

  

After the presentation was over, we stayed to tell him about our project idea and he said it was a great idea!  It was nice to talk to an expert and get such nice feedback.