Learn from the Past Towards a Better Future

Gabe S. - Green Machine Programmer - 7th Grade

If there's one thing the Green Machine team gets right, it's learning from our mistakes to perfect our technique, both in the little things like missions and programs, to big things like teamwork. When a person makes a mistake on a mission, the whole group is immediately there to offer support and creative ideas. While in the beginning, we were a disjointed cluster of small coteries thrown into the same room, I feel we have really gotten to a point where we can call ourselves a team. We realized arguing and petty rivalries aren't going to help us win; it'll just end up with Mr.  Smith in a mental hospital.

It also struck us that laughing at another group's mistake is not getting us any medals, because in the end, you'll be working with those people to create a winning program, and those mistakes will come up. But our greatest accomplishment is the way we nearly perfected the art of working together, an aspect I feel was very much absent in at the start of our season. of course, pressure that comes with competition days away has helped this, but you can really see the Green Machine is a team that helps each other, learns from each other, and supports one another in all manners.

Judging Technical Design

Jack W. – OwlBots Programmer – 8^th  Grade

There are four areas in the FLL competition, one of these areas is technical design.  In this section you are judged on three main areas: Mechanical Design, Programming, and Strategy/Innovation.  Mechanical Design assesses your robot’s durability, mechanical efficiency, and mechanization. Our robot has a large box like frame which reinforces the robot, allows us to square up against walls, makes it easier to mount attachments, and gives it a balanced center of gravity.

Programming assesses the quality and efficiency of the software we designed to make our robot move and sense its environment.   Our robot has two light sensors, allowing us to straddle the black lines and a color sensor to identify uniquely colored areas on the board.  This allows our robot to make small corrections as it travels around the board making it more consistent as well as easier to program.

Finally, we are judged on Strategy and Innovation. We have some very innovative attachments:

• a spring-loaded device that shoots pegs at a ball, the ball then (hopefully) smashes into the bowling pins.
• a Y shaped attachment that squares up on the quilts which corrects for any steering errors.
• a ramp that allows us to climb a set of stairs onto the tilting table so that we do not have to drive to the far end of the board where a ramp already exists.

We have developed a script for the technical judging.  This means we will know ahead of time who will be talking about what missions and what exactly we are going to say.  This way we won’t forget to mention any of our design accomplishments.

Greenbelt Tune-Up

Ryon S - Green Machine Programmer - 5th Grade
 

On Saturday, November 17, 2012 the OwlBots and Green Machine went to Greenbelt Elementary School to do a practice competition to prepare for our qualifying competition on December 15. There were 7 teams that competed in the competition. The pratice compitition was a replica of the qualifying round exept there will be 22 teams at the real qualifier.
 

During the competition every team was judged one technical design and their project. We also did a couple of scrimmages against the other teams. Before the scrimmages, the teams got to practice a little and change some of the programs. At the end of the day the OwlBots were first and the Green Machine was second place in Robot Performance (the scrimmages).

Mission Descriptions and Points

Antoś W. - Green Machine Programmer - 5th grade

The Woods robotics team has been working to program their robots to accomplish various missions on the FLL Senior Solutions board. The missions are designed to highlight this years theme - helping to keep seniors active and healthy.  Here are the descriptions of each mission and the number of points you earn by accomplishing them.

Mission 1: Wood Working

Take the chair, bring it back to base, and repair it. 15 points. If the robot brings it out of base and places it under the table, 25 points; if you do not have any part of the chair under the table, you lose the 15 points and you do not get the 25.

Mission 2: Medicine

Use a color sensor to find the green medicine bottle, which is placed randomly on the board by the referee at the beginning of the robot games. Bring the bottle back to base. 45 points.

Mission 3: Service Animals

Push the gray disc, and bring the service animal (dog) to base. The dog’s movement must be initiated by the robot pushing the gray disc, but then the robot may push the service animal directly the rest of the way to base. 25 points.

Mission 4: Bowling

Bring the ball from base to the bowling alley, and make the ball, in any way, hit the bowling pins. Each pin is worth 7 points, and if you hit all the pins, it is 60 points.

Mission 5: Quilting

There are four quilts, two blue and two orange. Bring the four quilts from base and push them together to the other quilts that are already attached to the board. The quilts must be touching the small black triangle in the center of the quilts affixed to the board. Each blue quilt is worth 15 points, and each orange quilt is worth 30. A total of 30 points is possible for blue and 60 for orange. Total: 90 points.

Mission 6: Gardening

Move the plants from base to the garden on the board. The plants’ base must be touching the bright area around the garden. 25 points.

Mission 7: Similarity Recognition

Make the red pointer attached to the board parallel to the pointer attached to the other team's board. This is a teamwork mission. 45 points if the pointers are parallel, and 0 if not.

Mission 8: Flexibility

There are two yellow loops on the far end of the board, away from the base. One loop is close to the ground, but the other one is high up. Bring both yellow loops back to base. 20 points each.

Mission 9: Video Call

Raise the two flags next to the TVs all the way up. You get 20 points for each flag, 40 total.

Mission 10: Ball game

If nothing is done on this mission and the ball rack is left alone, each team automatically earns 70 points. There is a rack mounted between two boards, with half of it over your board and half over the opposing team’s board. There are seven balls on the rack, and each ball that stays on the rack is worth 10 points. There are three blue balls, three red, and one yellow. Yellow is neutral. Red and blue balls belong to one of the two opposing teams. If you push the switch, it moves one of your balls, which are the ones closer to your base, to the middle and knocks out the ball that is currently in the middle. At the end of the game, if your ball is in the middle, it is worth an additional 60 points for your team.  If you time it right and your opponents don't knock out any balls you could earn up to 120 points for this mission.

Mission 11: Stove

Flip the stove switch so it turns off the burners. 25 points.

Mission 12: Strength Exercise

Push the little lever on the fork-lift to raise the weights (the weights are Lego wheels) as high as you can. If you lift the wheels above the red mark, you get 25 points, and if the wheels are within the red mark, you get 15. If they are below the red mark, it is 0 points.

Mission 13: Cardiovascular Exercise

There are arms attached to a contraption on which they rotate. If you rotate them, a pointer moves slightly and you gain 5 points per quarter turn up to a total of 118 points. But, after every quarter turn, you must go back to base and start over from there if you wish to earn more points on this mission. It is very time-consuming to earn the total, and doing it would make it impossible to complete every single mission within the allowed time.

Mission 14: Transitions

Go onto the bridge, and balance the robot on it. If the robot is on the bridge, but it is tilted, it is 45 points. If it is completely balanced, you earn 60 points, but if the robot is touching the ground, 0 points. 

Back to the Drawing Board

Catherine H. – Green Machine Researcher – 6^th Grade

The researchers from both teams have been going back and forth with on so many ideas.  The Green Machine researchers thought they had come up with a revolutionary idea, a GPS watch that helped Alzheimers patients find their way around the house.  We soon discovered that the idea had already been created – back to the drawing board...

The Owl Bots also suffered through the same disappointment.  They thought they had a great idea for a pill dispenser that made sure the right combinations of pills were dispensed at the right time and it notified caregivers when a patient forgot to take their medications.   But with some further research they discovered that a very similar solution had been thought of just a year ago – back to the drawing board…

Luckily, one member of their team came up with an awesome idea new idea – a facial recognition app for iPhone and iPad so that Alzheimers patients can easily identify friends and family members’ names.  After a lot of research we are confident no other app exists for this purpose.

The Green Machine researchers have been looking at music and memory.  We decided on a keyboard attachment for wheelchairs but now we think our solution is too limited – back to the drawing board…

Broken File Halloween Spooktacular!

JD M. - OwlBots Programmer - 7th grade

  Boooo!  The required file is broken!  This software error message repeatedly haunted Winston and I as we desperately tried to program our "lever" program.  The object of this mission is to have the robot lift up a tire to represent physical therapy on the mission board.  Our biggest fear was that the broken file error message meant we had to re-program everything we had done so far.  The scary thing was that it happened on every robot, and on every computer we tried.  Even when we made a completely different program, it still did not work.  Finally we came to a conclusion, get Darius, a member of the Owlbots and an excellent programmer.  Darius and several of the other of the programmers from the Owlbots and the Green Machine came over to help.  Eventually we had to re-install the Mindstorms software on to the computer and, finally, it worked.  

What this means is no matter what obstacle we face, as a team we will always find a solution!  And you can expect weird technical glitches on Halloween.