The whole Model Scout Robotics family (scouts, parents and and coaches) had fun at Moon Day at Frontiers of Flight Museum on July 21st. I’ll post photos and video when I get them from parents.
Moon Day is a local event that celebrates the anniversary of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the moon on July 20, 1969. Model Scout Robotics ran the Circle 10 Boy Scout booth and our team’s booth — we were busy! The scouts took several breaks from our booth to visit other booths and take part in the youth activities. Each team member got a Lunar Sample Bag from the museum staff with lots of space related goodies. (The team van now sports a NASA sticker. )
At our booth, the scouts shared their adventures and successes as a North Texas student robotics team. Showed other kids and adults some of our team NXT Lego Mindstorm creations. The younger kids loved watching us rerun our First Lego League 2011 robot, ScoutBot, doing the challenges. The older kids liked running our tele-operated robots(claw, forklift) . We were simulating control on Earth of 2 robots on the Moon. Our coach controlled his NXT robot on the museum floor via bluebooth using Android phone app.
Our team mom was busy too – publicizing the new BSA STEM Nova awards that encourage youth to explore STEM subjects in the boy scout program and the First Lego League robotics program open to youth teams age 10 to 14 in North Texas.
Matthew got interviewed for a story on local youth robotics.
The team parents’ ran the booth part of the time so scouts could tour the other booths at Moon Day and attend a couple of classes on Moon research and making artificial moon dust. Matthew and Anthony got to touch a real moon rock.
The museum put all of the robot groups in the same floor area, so it was easy to talk shop with the other teams. We visited with the other FIRST LEGO League team at the event, Iron Reign of Dallas. They were at the Dallas Personal Robotics Groups booth. They brought the Moonbots 2011 landscape and their robot.
Our booth was between to the Dallas Mars Society and Dallas Personal Robotics Group. It was cool that the Dallas Area Rocketry club was across the aisle from us too.
Dallas Mars Society brought their Mars Curiosity rover model and their Mars landscape. They gave us tips on making a moonscape inexpensively. We liked their rover’s camera system — wireless, full color display and the small camera can run on 9volt battery. It is a Lorex LW1001. Our coach is buying our team one of these cameras. It might come in handy for Moonbots Phase II.
It was quite a day. We provided community service to Circle 10 and the community, got a team field trip, practiced our speaking and presentation skills to get ready for upcoming FLL season and got some great tips that will help us in Moonbots Phase II, if we make the finals.