Well, we just got through the last competition for the season. This competition was held in Clovis and was the big state competition. If we won this one, we would be invited to attend the nationals. When we got there, we were surprised to learn that seventy-seven teams would be competing at Clovis...
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As we only have a few days left until the next competition, we thought it would be a good idea to list our good points, our bad points, and some things we need to make sure we point out to the judges. This will help us think through what we need to improve. Here is the mind map we created in MindM...
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Well, we are preparing for the final competition for this year. This is really important, because if we do incredibly well we might be selected to go to the Nationals. Everyone is really looking forward to this, but we're a little nervous. We have just reviewed the judging criteria for this upcomin...
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Kelly and Emily, though it is their very first year competing in the FLL program, did an outstanding job at the past two competitions. I'm especially proud of them for the San Deigo competition. PHOTO IMAGEEmily and Kelly piloted the robot by themselves and did amazingly well. I must admit, Wendy an...
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That's right! At the San Diego competition, this weekend, we received the Robot Design Award, again. PHOTO IMAGE This really means a lot to us, in past years, that had been our weakest point. We had really struggled with it this year as well, and devoted most of our time into making improvements. I...
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This weekend, we competed in San Diego along with a few other teams. We had a lot of fun and were glad that our grandparents and a friend of my father came to cheer us on. My father was busy snapping pictures of us at any moment. PHOTO IMAGE Here's a last minute picture of us on deck before going...
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"Hello happy humanoids! And welcome to my land. My name is Tom Morrow, and this is Tomorrow Land. I'm here to tell you about a place where Inventions and Innovations can be smushed together to form one big happy word... Innoventions! Amazing new stuff that's going to make your life better!" This is...
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This last week was our first competition. Although my mother had sent out invitations inviting people to come watch, we weren't really sure if anyone would come. Thus it was a nice surprise when my grandfather, his friend, and my aunt Royce came to cheer us on. They were also some of our sponsors,...
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Yesterday, we had the first competition of the season, the Santa Clarita Valley FIRST LEGO League Regional Tournament. We did incredibly well and were fortunate to receive two awards, the Teamwork Award and the Best NXT Design Award! PHOTO IMAGEIn past years, our strength had always lied in our pr...
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PHOTO IMAGEIn LEGO League Robotics, we don't just learn how to program and build robots; we also have to give a presentation. This year, we have to solve a problem using nanotechnology and present our solution to a panel of judges. The problem: Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. The solution: the CTR (Carpal Tunnel Robot). We really struggled in finding a creative way of presenting our solution. In past years, we found that giving our presentation in the form of a skit really gave it an interesting twist, and that the judges enjoyed it. In previous presentations, we've assumed the characters of super heroes, scientists, pedestrians, martians, NASA engineers, board executives, reporters, and marine lab scientists. As you can see, we really had a lot of fun and the judges enjoyed it too....
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Or in our case, "Slow and steady wins the competition". Wendy and I stayed up till 12:45 working on our robot. It's been slow, but we've been making progress in the right direction. Last night, we went to bed with three missions working continuously. Today, however, Wendy and I have again returne...
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PHOTO IMAGEAfter completing the Bucky Ball mission, Amy and I turned to our longest and most point gaining missions. This is a combination of the Stuck Nanotip, Individual Atom Manipulation, and the Unstainable Fabric. These mission will all be programmed into one slot, and we will do this sequenc...
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PHOTO IMAGEThat is what it feels like we are doing as we try to balance Research and Robot. And our deadline is drawing ever closer! No pressure, however, because we are the Lego Mountaineers and we can do anything! (Right?) Actually, for all the pressure of the deadline, we are really ploddi...
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A few days ago, Amy, Faith and I narrowed down our missions and tested all of them. Before Faith left, we had begun to discuss the best way to rebuild our robot's arm; we finally decided to make a design similar to the 2004 robot's. What made this arm both unique and ideal is that it was d...
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Well, our coach has been known to do some pretty interesting things before to get us thinking, and this is one of them. He had originally assigned us the job of running through every mission for fifteen minutes to test out the newly built robot (we had used some of our sponsor money to buy a second...
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PHOTO IMAGEThis space elevator is a team effort. No, not the individual teams, but the two teams at each of the two tables. Each side's robot has to push their lever to make the elevator go up and down. The risk is the possibility of your robot getting caught on the lever. This mission is worth fo...
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PHOTO IMAGEIn this mission, we have to deliver an ATP (adenosine triphosphate) molecule into the box on the molecular motor. If put in properly, the molecular motor should start up and release the battery, but we get the forty points even if the motor doesn't start up....
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PHOTO IMAGEOur goal here is to push a miniature dump truck onto a platform. This, when accomplished, is worth twenty points. If the team wants to go for more points, the second half to this mission is to push a lever and lift the platform and dump truck into the air. When this task is accomplished,...
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PHOTO IMAGEThis mission is a brain teaser for competing teams. The robot has to get medicine (buckyball) into the broken part of a LEGO bone. This is tricky because the ball can bounce out easily and the target for the medicine is extremely narrow. Perhaps the people who designed this competition sy...
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PHOTO IMAGEAlthough in a remote location at the end of the field, this particular mission is a relatively easy mission to accomplish. All that is needed is for the robot to knock the pole back and the individual pieces will fall over and assemble themselves. The complications are that the pole is at...
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PHOTO IMAGEOur goal in this mission is to unstick the stuck LEGO nanotip. This takes a lot of skill to accomplish. For one thing, the space in which you are given is incredibly narrow. You have to have precise aiming and programming to accomplish this mission. Even worse, the nanotip, which is conne...
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PHOTO IMAGEThis mission may very well be one of the hardest missions on the field. Here, we have a tray we have to push underneath the stain resistant fabric to catch the dirt (LEGOs) that will fall down. Then, our robot has to work itself around the back of the structure and push the trap full of d...
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PHOTO IMAGEIt's easy to get thrown off by the name of this wacky mission. Our goal is to push two pizza scent molecules onto a LEGO man's nose. No, not an actual LEGO man, this is just a huge picture of a LEGO character that is the area we want the molecules to end up. But it get's weirder. The LEGO...
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PHOTO IMAGEThis is a tricky mission to accomplish. The goal is to move one or more of the white LEGOs off the table without knocking off a single red LEGO. If we do end up knocking a red LEGO we won't get any points, we only get points for the white LEGOs. But wait, it gets even trickier. The table...
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With our deadline drawing rapidly to a close, we have a lot yet to accomplish. First of all, our robot design wasn't as good as we thought. Every time we added to the robot, it completely screwed up our programs and created a drag on the robot. Fortunately, our coach came up and presented some ideas...
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In three days, we're well on our way to the competitions! Three days ago, we had just built our robot and were about to present it to the team. Since then, the robot has been approved and we have begun to program it. PHOTO IMAGEOur first mission was to push the dump truck onto the small platf...
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PHOTO IMAGEThat's right! Yesterday, Wendy and I spent half an hour going over the last remaining tutorials, then spent the next five and a half hours building what we hoped to be our new competition robot. The product we came up with at the end of that time was a structurally weak robot that was inc...
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Learning From Our Sponsors Recently, Mr. Nick Duffill, from Gyronix, graciously sent us these few suggestions on how to write great programs. We decided to post some of his suggestions and add some of our own experiences. (His key points are in bold.)...
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For those of you who don't know what NXT is, NXT is MINDSTORMS newest addition to their LEGO parts. The NXT is a LEGO brick that is several times more capable of running missions accurately than the RCX. As a bonus, the NXT motors are designed with stepper motors and rotation sensors built in so tha...
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Well, we've finally found out what this year's challenge is about! It is indeed Nano Technology and it looks like we'll have a blast this year. Some of the things we guessed at were correct, but a lot of them were different from what we imagined. PHOTO IMAGEHere is an example: We have some pizza sce...
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PHOTO IMAGEWe just finished figuring out our budget for the year. In the past years, I never had an opportunity to be a part of planning the budget because the adults did that while we built the playing field. I was excited to learn how to make one. The first thing we did was go through our records...
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PHOTO IMAGEToday, we took apart the already built robots and picked one from the book. Then we taught Emily and Kelly how to build a robot. We separated into teams, Emily and Wendy on one and Kelly and I on the other, and each built our own robot. This was a lesson in patience and it also taught the...
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PHOTO IMAGEI have just downloaded the schedule for this years FLL program. Apparently the registration opened on May 8, but the handbooks and MINDSTORMS kit didn't start shipping till the middle of June. This month, the new NXT sets have started shipping (I hope ours get's here soon so we can start...
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I'm excited! We have just started our first official day of LEGO Robotics 2006. Our robotics team, the The LEGO Mountaineers is an all-girls home school robotics team. We have been competing in the U.S. First Robotics competitions for the past 4 years. PHOTO IMAGE Today, we finished making our first mind map for the U.S. First Competition. We use mind maps in all of our planning and we make maps often help us keep track of our goals, projects, ideas, and questions. This will also make it easier for us to keep track of what we have accomplished. Below, is a link to the mind map we made. I believe that it is because of our mind mapping and GTD planning skills that we were able to successfully plan, prepare, and win the Director's Award at two different competitions....
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PHOTO IMAGEWe are fortunate this year to have several sponsors and partners of our team. We are very grateful, as this provides us with the money and software that we will use to help our team. Our 2006 Corporate Sponsors: ActiveWords - Two years ago, Mr. Bruggeman came to visit and we showed hi...
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Yesterday, we were given the opportunity to share our thanks with one of our sponsors, David Allen. Unfortunately Lucy and Faith couldn't be there. As a token of our gratitude to him we gave him an official team shirt and a plaque with a picture of our team. Mr. Allen's sponsorship has been a g...
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When it came time for the awards ceremony we were all very excited. The anouncer did something very unusual by giving clues to which teams won each award before he announced the actual winning team. Every time he announced an award we all held our breath, hoping that it might be us that was getting...
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Today, our team went to the Tehachapi competition. We had high hopes about what we were going to be doing. We all wore the shirts that the Microsoft OneNote team had custom made for us, (Thanks OneNote!). When we got there, we were surprised at how well run the competition was. The awards were v...
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The evening ran late, and we were very tired by the time the awards ceremony started. We were elated when they called us to receive the Performance Award. The Performance Award was given to us because our robot performed consistently well throughout the competition. Imagine our surprise when t...
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Other team ball and basket Our robot had been doing well all evening, and we had been chosen for the quarter finals and semi-finals. We went up against a team that had a very impressive robot with a mechanical claw that could move around and pick up balls. Our first mission during that match...
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We walked into the research presentation room. We were surprised with how small and over-crowded the classroom was. It was a small music room. We were glad that we had practiced in our small family room. There was barely room to walk, but we managed to move some boxes to set up our props. T...
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This afternoon we drove to ABC Middle School in Newhall, California. We followed the signs from the parking lot to the cafeteria. This is where we to set up our "pit" area. The room was loud and very crowded. Teams had set up their playing fields all over the floor to practice. It was interesti...
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Tonight, we practiced our presentation. We have decided to deliver our research presentation in the form of a skit. The team had to go over it several times because there were many hard words to pronounce. We have to hurry because our first competition is in just a few days. The team still has a...
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Today, Wendy and I prepared a presentation about an idea that the team has been discussing. The subject of the presentation was the RPAC, which stands for Robotic Personal Assistance Cart. This will be used to help people who face physical challenges moving around. My sister Wendy and I used Mic...
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Today was a wonderful day in terms of progress and experience. We accomplished things that we have either not tried or were not successful in attempting before. For instance, we perfected the bus route missions, ( explained in our previous blog), decided on an official robot, and accomplished...
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Today we made great progress in what we have been trying to do. Our team now has an official robot and two of the missions solved and programmed into the robot. We still need a lot of practice aiming for the ball mission though. Lucy, our new team member has actually been doing really well in th...
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Along the competition field are three flags which represent bus stops. Two flags are red and one is white. The position of the white flag will be randomly changed prior to the start of each match, so we cannot rely on it being in the same place all the time. The goal is to have the robot knock o...
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Last night we were introduced for the first time to our new web site. We all really like it. Our goal for this web site is to tell people who we are and let them know what we are doing. We hope this web site will work out. The year before last we had a web site but it didn't work out. we were al...
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Last night while the adults were fixing our playing field, (which by the way they did a marvelous job doing) us kids went to our meeting area to discuss some missions. We talked about the opportunities and weaknesses of each missions and took a look at the logic in doing them. After that we look...
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Today we had our first official meeting of the year. It was very exciting! (And tedious!) We looked at the playing field and started building the pieces that goes on the mat. I am also very excited because we now have a new team member, Lucy. She is a fun person to have on the team. And I also t...
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Today our coach (my father) told us about a product called OneNote. He said that we will be using OneNote for the team to take down our notes. OneNote is a special product that allows you to take down notes quickly. One of the features that helps you do this is a recording device that allows you...
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We are fortunate this year to have several sponsors and partners of our team. We are very grateful, as this provides us with the money and software that we will use to help our team. Our sponsors for 2004: The David Allen Company - Thank you, Mr. Allen, for being a friend and champion and...
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Today my father had me write a blog about how I got interested in robotics. Truth be told, Dad's big hobby is robots. "I actually had robot's longer than I have had kids," Dad reminded me. So I grew up on robots. I remember having them all my life. A year before we started LEGO my father helped...
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Today is very exciting! Mr. Allen of the David Allen Company has just agreed to sponsor our team! He is the first sponsor we have ever had. His donation will help us greatly. He even gave us more than we asked for! This was a great surprise and will help a lot. The whole team is excited! Hopef...
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This year two of our older team members left us. We also will lose another next year as the age limit is 14. We discussed this and decided to invite two new people to join us. One person has replied interested but not sure; the other has not responded. We are crossing our fingers that they will...
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Today, Wendy and I wrote a proposal of sponsorship. It was very time consuming, but we finally came up with something we were pleased with. I am eager to start LEGO League this year. After talking about it all year, it is exciting to finally start. The last two years have been wonderful and...
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It was a cold, foggy morning when we got to LEGOland in Carlsbad, California. But, even the weather couldn’t have dampened our spirits. It was our second year, and we hoped to do better. After checking in at the entrance, we were led to our table in the main tent. There, we displaye...
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Introducting.... The LEGO Mountaineers, Team 1191 We, the LEGO Mountaineers, are a group of six girls who are home-educated. Our parents brought us together to participate in the LEGO Robotic League. The purpose of the league is to involve children, ages 9-14, in math, science, robotics, a...
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