May 10 Challenge Wrapup

The first "Second Saturday Challenge" was  a great success! I have to be honest, I wasn't sure the kids were going to solve any of the challenges. A week before, I was thinking about cancelling the first one because the kids hadn't made much progress. Having worked with these particular kids for two seasons, though, I know how much they get done under pressure and at the last minute. It isn't always pretty, but they do get to work. I'm still trying to figure out how to get them to start working earlier in the process. I'm hoping that the repeated challenges over the summer will help get them to start working earlier!

There is a complete description of the challenges we worked on here. The kids ended up accomplishing quite a bit. We ran the challenge once in the morning and once in the afternoon, and used their best performance of the day for scoring. The first challenge we worked on was Ping Pong.  It's  a simple task, the robot has to travel back and forth between two blue lines without veering off course and crashing into the walls.

Emmett gets ready to launch his robot during Ping Pong

Three of four participants earned the maximum possible points for Ping Pong, so the time bonuses were important!

Ping Pong Results
Emmett: 10 lines in 45 seconds, scores 30 + 10 time bonus, 40 points total
Luke: 10 lines in 64 seconds, scores 30 + 8 time bonus, 38 points total
Eden: 10 lines in 101 seconds, scores 30 + 6 time bonus, 36 points total
Jacob: 3 lines, 9 points total


The second challenge was Find the Pass. There are two walls on the table with gaps in them that can be in 5 different locations, and the robot has to find them and drive through. We rolled dice to decide where the passes would be. In this challenge, one robot found both passes, and another two found one pass.

There is great suspense waiting to see if the robot will find the second pass!

Find the Pass Results
Eden: 2 passes in 37 seconds, 30 + 10 time bonus, 40 points total
Emmett: 1 pass in 8 seconds, 15 + 8 time bonus, 23 points total
Jacob: 1 pass in 14 seconds, 15 + 6 time bonus, 21 points total
Luke: no passes

Totals
Eden: 78
Emmett: 63
Luke: 38
Jacob: 30

After the competing was done, we talked about what challenge we should add for next month. The kids practically demanded a challenge that involves an attachment, so we decided that the robots will be retrieving a LEGO ball and bringing it back to where they started. Details should be worked out by next week, but here's a photo-hint: