Monthly Archives: August 2012

Moonbots Meeting 8/15 Made Landscape Prototype

Our team made a paper version of our lunar landscape a month ago.  Today during our Moonbots meeting we confirmed our design by producing a prototype of our missions on the lunar landscape.  We checked that our robot could move about easily and that the robot maintenance bay (base), spaceport, plateau and all mission elements placement made sense on the board.

Our next meeting is Thursday, August 16.  We plan to cut out the plateau from Styrofoam sheets and glue together. 

Note: Our ramp got dropped and broke while we were setting up so we replaced it temporarily with a green base plate for our meeting.

MoonBots 8/11 Meeting Game Missions complete

Today at MoonBots,

  • we reviewed documentation Katie produced from prior meeting notes.  We finalized Game Mission documentation and scoring for missions and penalties.  On our final mission list, we have some missions that highlight Google Lunar X Prize,  opportunities for the Moon (mining, solar energy, science) and 2 other missions just for fun.
  • Then, Matthew and Anthony worked changes to base ramp and another prototype robot.  Katie worked on photos, this blog and building a Facebook page for our team.

Photos of FLL 2012 Senior Solutions mat and missions

Note: photos updated on 8/12/2012 after we figured out more missions and got comments from other teams.  KT    Send us comments if you see any other changes.

In the spirit of Coopertition® and Gracious Professionalism, below are pictures of our completed Senior Solutions robot game table with mission mat and mission models.   We think a lot of the school based teams in our area (North Texas) may not have access to their FLL robot game yet.     Our blog software only gives us 2MB photos.

Please note that my team is GUESSING about the mission model locations on the mat.    FIRST LEGO League will announce the official robot game mission board and mission descriptions on August 28th.    Here are some pictures with how we think it will look on the board:

 

Update: We also now think that the smaller part of the white broken chair starts in Base.   I’ll take a new photo at next team meeting.

 

Starting at Base and going clockwise around the board and then up the middle

 

We now think the bottles need to be reversed so you can see the white center labels from the photo below. We think the mission might be to find the orange bottles and take to home base leaving the green bottle within the lines at end of the game.

 

 

 

Good Luck with 2012 Senior Solutions!  We are busy working on MoonBots Phase 2, so if we don’t answer your comments for more information on mission elements, that is the reason for the delay.

FLL Senior Solutions Mission Model build complete 8/8/2012

Today was the first meeting of our team’s FLL 2012 season.

As a meeting opener, Matthew, Anthony and Katie ran FLL Food Factor robot game for new team members Walter and Veronica.   For the rest of the meeting, everyone built 2012 robot game mission models on the kitchen table.   We got all models built in 2 hours.  We then deduced most of the mission elements location on the mat.

The team is very excited about solving these mission challenges.    Robot game looks fun again this year.  One of us will post photos of challenges and mat in an article tomorrow.

FLL Senior Solutions 2012 Mat and Mission Models arrived; team build Weds

The First Lego League 2012 Senior Solutions mat, mission model Lego pieces and build instructions arrived in a small box today at our coach’s house.

Katie and Matthew cleaned up the lab so our coach would open the box. An email from FLL had warned coaches to open the box and lay out the mat upon arrival so the wrinkles and creases would relax.  The mission mat was folded in the box, so Matthew and Patrick laid out the new mat on our FLL table.  Katie will publish a photo of the mat tomorrow.   We don’t have enough room to do MoonBots and FLL in our lab so we will use the lab for FLL since the FLL table is there.  We will do our MoonBots Phase II project in the spare room next to our FLL lab.

We had planned to wait to build the mission models until the FLL 2012 challenges were announced on August 28th.  Seeing the box of bagged Legos calling to us to be built; is like having unopened Christmas presents in the house.   Our coach contacted the rest of the team and we now have a meeting and build scheduled for tomorrow.  As we build, it will be fun to guess the robot game challenge missions.

MoonBots 8/7/2012 Team Meeting

Today at MoonBots team meeting we did the following:

  • Watched Curiosity Entry Descent and Landing coverage on NASA TV and looked at latest pictures.  Matthew and Patrick had stayed up late to watch the coverage live late Sunday night.
  • The Dallas Morning News called to interview the team.  They and Iron Reign will be in an article in the Thursday or Friday newspaper.
  • We celebrated Anthony birthday with cake and strawberries.
  • Reviewed Mission Model status.  Matthew demoed his launcher.   We decided Anthony will create a space shuttle like vehicle in Lego Digital Designer to add more flair to the board.     Patrick showed a modification to the starting base. Everyone liked it.  There aren’t any other mission model changes.   Patrick will order the parts for the starting base.
  • Team placed the base for the MoonBots game board into place.    We added the 25 base plates and secured them together to each other using Legos.   We added our prototype mission high ridge and ramps.  We also added a paper version of each mission model to the board to see how it looks.
  • Katie inished the document on Game Missions with point values.   She adjusted the point values assigned at the last team meeting so the maximum score is 380.   We didn’t have time to review. She is working next on the game description and a scoring sheet.
  • Our next MoonBots meeting is on Saturday Aug 11th.

Our MoonBots Phase I prizes arrived

Our MoonBots Phase I finalist prizes arrived today!  We received a Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0 robotics kit to add to our collection, 4 Google Lunar X MoonBots 2012 t-shirts, a $150 Visa gift card, a Dexter Industries solar power kit for our Mindstorms robot, 25 Lego gray base plates, a set of four 48mm Lego compatible Rotacaster robot wheels, 10  Lego keychains and brochures to share. We will use our prizes to build our MoonBots Phase II contest challenge entry.