Owl Bots Visit Discovery Education, Prep for the State Finals this Weekend

After working since September, The Owl Bots are primed and ready for the FLL State competition at UMBC this weekend.  As a final tune up, The Owl Bots visited Discovery Education and met with industry executives to get some last minute feedback for their research presentation.  Students met with professionals from research and design, marketing and advertising, and content development.  The officials were able to directly question the Owl Bots and gave us a lot more to think about in the final days before the competition.  Win or lose, The Owl Bots are ready to have fun and give their best effort this weekend.

2 / 28 / 15:  MD FLL State Championship at UMBC

Extra, Extra!! Owl Bots make it to State Qualifier!!

The Woods Academy Robotics teams traveled to GlenElg Country school on December 6th to compete in their FLL: Robotics Qualifier for a chance to travel to the State finals in March.  Both teams, The Owl Bots and The Green Machine, spent a full day presenting their research plans and completing missions based on a series of challenges presented to them at the beginning of the season.   The competition focused on three key areas of assessment:  Robot Design, Project Research, and Core Values.

The Owl Bots will be returning to the State Finals at UMBC in March and continue the tradition of excellence for The Woods Academy Robotics Team.  Since its inception, we have sent at least one team to the State Finals each year. 

The Green Machine made a valiant effort, but came up short in the end.  They had a lot of fun and gained some valuable experience for next year's competition.


STAY TUNED FOR MORE DETAILS AFTER THE HOLIDAY!!

2014 - 2015 Robotics Team: Ready for a GREAT season!!

2014-2015 Robotics Team:  Think Tank



Project Mission:  Find a better, more innovative way for someone to learn something 

The 2014 - 2015 Robotics Team is off and running, and we are all very excited for the upcoming season.  This year's challenge is "Think Tank" and each member is responsible for figuring out a way that we can improve learning in a particular area of focus.  Team members are also using the new EV3 model from First Lego League, and diligently trying to prepare for our qualifying event in December.

Research Script

This week, on The Woods Academy Owlbots, we have come up with a draft script for our research project. As you know, our research project is an app that alerts people when there is a natural disaster about to happen. We have created a script that depicts a family using the app to try and survive a tornado. In the script, the family starts out not having the app and not knowing what to do in the storm. We rewind the scene and tell what would happen if the family had the app. In the scene where the family has the app, the family survives and knows what to do.

This week The Woods Academy Green Machine has built the Lego houses to help support their "storm proof house" idea for their research project. One of the two houses is going to represent the storm proof house and how it would protect against storms and the other is representing a normal house that would not survive a storm.  Here are a couple pictures to show the Green Machine building the house.

     

Research Project Idea

This week on the Owlbots, we've come up with our research project idea. While we were  brainstorming for our idea, we were primarily thinking of random things that would never be plausible, so we had some trouble. On the last day we had to think of an idea, all of us thought of last year and the app we created, so we decided to do the same thing.


Since it is almost impossible to prevent a natural disaster from occurring, we focused on helping those who were affected by the storm. We decided to make an app which intelligently knows when and how hard a natural disaster has occurred. When a decision is made that help may be needed, the app gives you a push notification, as with all apps. When activated, it gives you advice about how to stay safe and recover.

Natural disaster this week? I don't think so!

This week in robotics we put the final touches on the board and started programming the robots.
     This week the Green Machine team is stuck between a few different natural disasters for their research project. They are thinking about forest fires, avalanches, and tsunamis. Programming has had a slow but steady start. On Friday, everyone was at Calleva  but this week things are sure to pick up.
     This week on the Owlbots team things are going well. Research wise they are almost certain they have an idea for their project on tsunamis. On Friday, they started on programming their robots, everyone is pretty excited to get further into robotics!
     Overall robotics is going well.  All the projects are getting great starts and it looks like we are going to have a great year in robotics!

By Cecilia Bowe

First week robotics

This is the first blog and first week of the Owlbots and Green Machine's 2013-2014 robotics season. Since this is our first week, we had to set up the robotics game table. On Tuesday, we all split up. Some people worked with partners and others by themselves to build the different tasks. Everybody chose the task they wanted to build and they built them. Most missions were completed in the first practice, but some took longer than others. Returning team members said this year's table is much different than last year's. This year's robot games, named "Nature's Fury," is all about natural disasters. There are many missions, including one where the robot has to bring people to safety. Also, there is a mission where the robot has to push an ambulance from one place to another. On another note, in the research practice, team members worked on ideas for the research project. This year's topic is a solution for when there are natural disasters. One idea was an underground water purifier when there is a drought. Next week, team members will come up with more research ideas. Also, they will come up with robot ideas and ways to efficiently complete missions.