June 9th is Approaching Quickly

Lego Robotics Class Activities

Focus: Build and Program a robot to complete one of the missions of the June 9th Queen's Tournament.

Some groups are reporting that:

"Our group is building a robot to solve the Mountain Climber mission."
"My group is building a robot to solve the ball game."
"Our group is attempting to build a robot with a claw to solve the Ballgame mission."

Here is a Checklist for a Completed Robot:

Are you using the RCX or NXT?
Components: Chassis, Claw/Plow/Arm, Gear Train, other significant features?
Is the chassis completed? Is the Arm or Plow completed? Is the Gear Train appropriate for the mission and is it completed?

What is the team's idea?
Is the building completed?

Is there a plan for the programming?

Has any testing taken place? And if so, how has the design or programming changed?

Did the changes improve the performance of the robot or reduce the effectiveness of the robot?

Teams will be asked to run practice missions on the competition table next Friday. Your team will talk about the mission they chose before running a practice mission. After the mission has been run, students will discuss the success of the practice session.

Lunch-time periods are open for extra building and programming time. Check 301 for availability.

Writing Awards

Congratulations to the students of class 819 who went to Albany. They went there to receive the awards they won for writing they submitted to a contest.

God job!

Better!

I read all of the comments about the missions you all plan to solve.

I would like you to submit sketches or photographs of your prototypes so we can begin to make commentary on the form and function of each group's design.

Do you have programs in mind yet? Maybe groups should begin to plan for prgramming while they build robots. I have a feeling the programming will become very important for these missions especially for the craertive challenges!

Click here to see the challenges for the next event.Region 4 Lego Site

Please choose an event to solve during class. Add a comment to let me know what you are planning. In other words, tell me how you will design and program a robot to solve one challenge.

Race Day!

How do we run a race with slowbots?

You have been so successful at designing turtlebots that a regular ready-set-go! type of race is not practical. So, we will think out of the box to come up with new kind of race- a theoretical race.

You will race by figuring out your robot's average speed and comparing that to the other robots to see who wins the race. We will use 10 minutes as the length of the race. The robot that moves the shortest distance would therefore win the slowbot race!

How do we figure out who goes the shortest distance?

The motor runs at 375 RPM. (Revolutions Per Minute, 375rev/1min)
Let's assume the motor runs at 90% capacity due to drag from the weight of the robot.
My gear ratio is 13824:1.

So the 375RPM's is reduced by 10% which equals 337.5 RPM.

If you think of a wheel on a desktop, when the wheel goes through one full revolution, it has moved along the desk the same distance as its circumference (pi * OD or 3.14 times the outside diameter). Then, you just need to convert rpm to miles per hour taking care to watch your units.

OD is a short form of saying 'outside diameter'. For a tire, it's the distance across the tire from one edge to the other edge (not the hole in the center where the tire is mounted on the rim). Let's say you had a tire/wheel with a 24" OD. One revolution of the tire would mean that the tire rolls along the pavement 24" * pi or about 75.4 inches (if you marked a spot on the tire and put that on the ground and rolled the tire one full revolution so that spot would be on the ground again, the distance between the two points would be 75.4 inches). Let's then say the tire is turning at 100 rpm. Therefore, the distance the tire is covering is 7,540 inches per minute (75.4 inches per revolution * 100 revolutions per minute). Finally, you change that into what units you want.

So my tire is 1.5 inches diameter, now multiply that by 3.14 which is 4.71 inches. The RPM is 337.5 x 1/13824 = .0244 rpm's because the motor output RPM is changed by the gear reduction to .0244 RPM's. Now I multiply rpm by distance by time which is .0244 x 4.71inches x 10 minutes = 1.15 inches . Got it? What is the distance for your robot?

Crazy Gear Ratios

Students have been so successful at designing slow robots that we may need a few weeks just to get some the Slowbots to move an inch!

Work groups have until the end of the week to finalize their designs before our "race."

One of the rules of the race is that each member of the group has to be prepared not only to name the gear ratio of the gear train of the group but to expalin how the final numbers of the ratio was obtained. For example, if the gear train on my Slowbot had a gear train with a combination of gears reducing from eight-tooth gears to forty-tooth gears twicw, then the gear ratio would be 25:1. This is because the first ratio was 8:40 reduced 5:1. This happens twice in my example therefore 5:1 times 5:1 would give the fianl 25:1. Got it?

Slowness Turtle-Bots

Please post your description of your slowbot. For example:

My slowbot starts with a motor connected to a chain of three worm gears connected on the last axle to a pulley that connects to the drive axle. It is covered by a box and moves about one centimeter every five minutes.

Snailbot Slowbot Turtlebot?

This unit will focus our designing skills on creating the slowest robot of all. I am not sure what we should call it.

The requirements are written in the room. Please use the commenting feature to write in one requirement at a time.

Also, I would like each group to check in and write the name of your new robot.

First Place Robot Design

Congratulations to the I.S. 93 Eagles! The team won the 1st place in the category of "Robot Design" in the New York City First Lego League Nanquest Competition.

This is the category of the competition where two members of the team deliver an oral presentation about the technical aspects, including design and programming, to a small panel of judges. The judges ask pointed questions to determine the extent of knowledge and understanding of robotic principals and specifics of their design.

The Eagles understand!

I will post pictures soon. I am very proud of the teamwork that went into Sunday's competition. By the way, the Eagles placed 8th and 20th overall in points earned on the competition table.

Permission Slip for FLL Nanoquest, 01/28/07

Please download, print and sign the permission slip. Bring it with you to the tournament Sunday. I will be there at 8:00am. You may want to come then to adjust your program for the light in the gym.

Parking Rules for the FLL Nanoquest at Riverside Park

The directions below will get you to the park entrance at Riverside Drive and West 145th Street.

CARS and VANS: DO NOT LEAVE YOUR CAR UNATTENDED AT THE CIRCLE – IT WILL BE TICKETED.

• Drive into the park, past the information booth at the 145th St. entrance, over the bridge and to the circle and a look for a Park Ranger giving out parking permits and maps to the lot located on the lower level, below the park.
• When you get your parking permit from the ranger on the park level,Then follow the map to the parking lot. It is a long walk back upstairs from the lot to the gym. To get to the lot, you'll have to go back out on to the streets, follow the directions carefully - we do mean carefully –they’re not that easy to follow.
• Park your car, take the elevator or the six flights stairs and walk back up to the gym.

You need to get the permit to park before you park. It is a very long route to get back to the parking lot. The Gym is built over the parking lot and you have to drive a few miles to back underneath it so please get the permit first!

Use the previous post to get directions to the park.

Next Week is the Competition

One week from today is the First Lego League Competition at Riverbank St Park in Manhattan.

We will meet Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Thursday is an extra practice. We will work until 5:30 Wed and Thur. and till 6:00pm on Friday.

Our future engineers are busy solving missions and practicing their verbal reports about their robots and Robolab code.

LOCATION:

Gymnasium
Riverbank State Park
679 Riverside Dr. (at 145th Street)
New York, NY 10031

The entrance to the park is on Riverside Drive at West 145th Street in Manhattan. Go down near the end of this e-mail for travel directions and VERY important instructions about PARKING.

For directions, go to: Park directions.

SNOW CANCELLATION:

If the weather causes Riverbank State Park to close, we will cancel the tournaments. You may call 718-260-3383, 973-596-3234, or 973-596-3572 for a recorded message regarding our status.

THE SCHEDULE:

8:00am - 9:00am Registration, Robot Inspection
9:30am - 10:00am Opening Ceremonies
10:00am - 11:00am Competition Round I *
11:00pm – 12:00pm Competition Round II *
12:00pm-1:00pm Lunch
1:00pm - 2:00pm Competition Round III *
2:30pm - 3:00pm Award Ceremony

8-9am, 10:00am - 2:00pm - Research Presentations (see below)
8-9am, 10:00am – 2:00pm – Technical Presentation (see below)

NanoQuest Work

The team has been refining segmented missions. Segementing is when students break down a mission to smaller steps. They solve the programming issues for each part-- the segment and then put the segments together to make a complete program that solves the mission.

Then, many times they can put two missions together under one slot in the RCX.

Next Wave of Robots

Robert, Danny and Eugene have built robots that will perform well as FLL robots. Wednesday was really productive after school. All three students have adapted gear trains, imbedded rotation sensors and have anchored decent claws or the third motor. They have steering under control and now can solve missions. Great job!

Abanoub, our newest and youngest team member is showing great potential. He has built a "half-track" robot that has rack and pinion steering with tank treads for power. It's an interesting robot. It reminds me of the picture I posted here. The other Robert has been helping Abanoub out with Robolab essentials and teaching him about "robust design" concepts. He may well be our new star!

Practice Tournament

December 16th is the date for the Queen's Region 4 Robotics Practicve Tournament

That is a Saturday, please set that date aside. We need everyone to participate!

Progress and Activities

We are making progress in class. We are finishing the assembly of the FLL Nano Quest missions.

Not completely sure what you should be doing in class?

These are the four activities that you should be engaged in:

1. Assembling a mission.
2. Building or rebuilding a robot.
3. Programming or re-programming a robot in Robolab.
4. Making entries into your Science Journals or Robotics blog.

Please let me find you engaged in these activities during class time. Of course, everyone helps clean up at the end after we summarize our work period.

Work Group Names

I would like each work group to please post a comment about what their new names are and how you came up the names. Already, the newly named "Geodesiks" told me that while researching, they found this guy Buckminster Fuller and asked if I had ever heard of him. I replied," Why, Yes I have. He was a famous thinker who designed, among other things, a structure called the geodesic Dome, which looks like a soccer-ball house. They said, "That's it!" With a little tweaking they had a name that they came up from their own research. and were able to talk about how he was and what he did.

It just does not get any better than that as a teacher.

This week, if you finished building a working mission to solve- start solving it! That means, if the mission structure your group was assembling is functioning properly, start designing and building a robot that is able to perform actions to solve the mission. Use your Science Journal entries to guide your building-- you already have sketches and notes about how you think you will be able to solve the mission.

Be the 5th person to tell me the name of the Platonic Solid in the right hand corner for a surprise.

Somethings to read about...

I would like you to read about a few programs:

Poly Tech Summer Programs

and the BotBall organization.

This Week. 9/25/06

Works groups for 8TA Lego Robotics at I.S.93 started the assembly of the FLL Nano Quest Challenge missions last week. The groups also did their homework which was to come up new work group names. Since the theme is a molecular one this year I had hoped to get some good names. One group came with the "Geodeziks" because they found some research on Buckminster Fuller and wanted to pay homage to his body of work. What a great name for a work group! They get it that that "geodesic" concerns distances while comparing curves and straightline measurements. I love to hear and see the creativity of my students.

This week we will continue to assemble the missions. Obviously we need the missions to be on the mat instead of in pieces in a bag but... Where is the learning? What I am supposed to learn by following printed directions?

The answer is:

1. Team building and improving the skill of working in a group are the two concepts I am concerned with for one.
2. I also want individuals to pay attention to how the missions were engineered. I have begun to appreciate the cleverness of the design of the missions, not just the idea of that mission. In other words, look at how the pieces of the mission are constructed. we can so much about design and engineering by how other people solve problems and by how they design.
3. Then I want the individuals to discuss and record design and construction techniques within the work group. " Look how the connectors are hidden by the technics beams ." "Look how the pieces are combined to make a different piece."

NanoQuest Challenges IS 93

We are beginning our Lego Robotics program for 2006-2007.

1. We are printing the instructions for assembling the missions.
2. We have each work group focusing on one mission.They will assemble the mission and then describe it to the other groups.
3. Planning our teams. We may field a RCX, NXT,and VEX team this year.

Stay tuned!