Matthew
Team Leader
Last Sunday, the team went to Loughborough University to compete at the 2016 FLL UK & Ireland Final. Once we had all arrived, we practiced the presentation. We then went through to the main arena for the opening ceremony. Soon after, we had our first run on the table. Unfortunately, we only scored 354 points, nowhere near our maximum score of 722. This was followed by the Core Values judging, in which our communication skills were tested and we answered some questions. A while later, we went to the Robot Design judging and showed our robot's innovative features. Our next activity was our second robot round. The round went particularly bad, and we scored just 113. This was followed by the Project Judging. Our final event of the day was the third robot game round. We did a little better, scoring 392 points, but it was was not good enough for the top 8, so we did not progress any further. We think the main reason for the robot's poor performance was table. After that, we could enjoy the rest of the day including making a balloon "suit" for one of our team members. All in all, it was a fun day, if a little disappointing. But one day, we'll be back...
Matthew Team Leader
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Today, we had our last meeting before the Nationals on Sunday. We started the day with a visit to the J. Jones & Son scrapyard in Devizes (whom we visited before as part of our research) to share our idea. Upon returning to our meeting place, we began by practicing the changeovers between mission trips. We then practiced our presentation. The rest of the day was filled by sorting out forms, finishing off a few things, practicing changeovers, and doing some programming changes. We hope to do well at the Nationals on Sunday, and maybe even win an award...
Matthew Team Leader Today, we started by talking and thinking about Core Values, and then moved on to the project. The presentation is coming together well. We also answered some difficult mock questions from our coaches, which we think went quite well. More questions came on the robot design. We are now working on our changeovers between the mission trips, and getting them up to speed. A lot more work will be going into those changeovers over the next two weeks in the run up to the Nationals!
See you next time, Peter D and Joseph Team Members This Thursday, we started by doing some experiments to test benefits of a crumb rubber road. We did this with a rubber car tyre and several remote control cars. We dragged the tyre across some wet tarmac and measured the amount of friction generated of the tyre. We then did the same thing on a rubberized playground surface. All this was to compare the friction generated between tarmac and surface rubberized asphalt. We then spent the rest of the morning on the project and presentation.
Samuel M-B Team Member On Thursday, we spent time on all aspects of the competition. In the project we invited an A Level student to talk to us about the scientific method for several experiments which we will perform. We also shared our solution to her. John has worked on revised script, which will soon ready. The robot is coming along nicely, but we still have a lot of work to do. The registration form for the Nationals has been filled in and sent off. We have only three meetings left, and unfortunately one of our members will be away for those weeks, which makes things reasonably difficult, but we are confident that we can push through the challenges.
Peter D Team Member On Thursday, we threw ourselves back into preparing for the upcoming Nationals in February. In order to increase the credibility of our solution, we decided to do some experiments which will test the rubber's resistance to fire and how it changes performance in wet conditions. We also discussed the revision of the robots missions (renamed to trips to avoid confusion with the missions as described in the Challenge document) and have added a 4th motor to the back of the robot, increasing its capabilities. We have now also created duplicates of all the frames from the Regionals to provide a backup for the Nationals. We also started changing the frames for the revised trips.
Peter H Team Member On Wednesday, we competed at the Wessex Region FLL tournament at the HP Labs in Bristol. Soon after our arrival, we tested the robot a little bit on one of the Practice Mats. The robot programs required very little modification throughout the day, demonstrating the ability of our robot to work on different mats. After the "opening ceremony," we returned to our Pit area to prepare for our presentation. We think our presentation went very, and we also think we did well in answering the judges' questions. Soon after the other two teams' presentations, we had our first run on the table, scoring 375 points.
As part of sharing our solution, the details of our 2015 Project are now available to view here. We hope that it is interesting and inspiring to you. Matthew
Team Leader Today was our last session before the Regionals. We spent the morning running through the presentation and robot design award judging and answering questions from our mock "judges", i.e., the coaches. The afternoon was spent practicing the robot runs and finishing our props for the research presentation. The Regionals are on Wednesday, so we will tell you how we did soon.
Samuel M-B and Peter D Team Members Today, we spent most of the morning discussing core values and robot design, as well as a few robot runs. The boards and props for our presentation were prepared by Peter D. After lunch we focused on the presentation, and we had a professional engineer come to hear about our solution. The robot seems to be fairly reliable, and we are getting better at our robot runs. The competition is on Wednesday, so only one more session on Monday.
Peter D and Joseph Team Members |
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