New FIRST LEGO League Season has begun

Wow - it is hard to believe that the 2010 Body Forward™ Challenge has already begun. The Microbots signed up again this year and we are wondering how best to participate. Look for articles in BrickJournal magazine as we try to help teams with some of the issues that they face.

Issue 11 of BrickJournal starts our discussion of batteries. In part 1, we look at battery characteristics. In part 2 (slated for issue 12), we look at voltage and its effect on the robot.

We wish all of the teams who are participating in FLL the best of luck this year. We have heard that the challenge is really tough. Good luck to all!

The Microbots’ Robot Design

Our robot design is built to traverse the uneven terrain found on the moon. The design in LEGO Digital designer shows the brick layout but several parts such as the wheels are not available in LDD. This design was selected for the maneuverability on the bumpy LEGO surface.

 

 
The robot has three sensors and a camera. On the right side is a compass sensor that allows more precise accuracy on turns. On the left side is a touch sensor to start the robot. There is a light sensor near the left wheel to allow the robot to understand when it has reached the Peak of Eternal Light.
 

The arm in front allows the robot to pick up the various items that it will be collecting along the way.

Zach

Tad
Gala

Microbots MoonBots Video Version 2.0

Ta-da!

We know it won't count with the judges, but it's fun watching MoonBots videos, and we had some great ideas that we just didn't have time to put in our first video before the deadline! So here is Microbots MoonBots video essay version 2.0!



Hope you like it!

Go MoonBots!

Gala

BrickJournal Issue 10

A new BrickJournal magazine comes out every two months with a Mastering FIRST LEGO League article. We wrote an article in this issue that discusses the various ways to turn the robot. This may sound easy but there are many different and interesting ways to turn the robot. Enjoy pictures of the various FLL teams that are included bimonthly in our column.

Who knows, maybe we will do an article on the MoonBots challenge.

Our Robot Design

Our robot design is unique in many ways. It can easily traverse the ridge while maintaining its alignment. It can pick up the elements, find its way to the various challenges, and use changes in the color of the terrain to position itself, while filming the whole thing. We put a quick video on our share which shows us testing it using bluetooth. We can't wait to get the obstacles and make it autonomous.

The MoonBots Challenge

Phase I of the the MoonBots Challenge is finished and the theme of our research presentation was "A Cloud on the Moon". The following cover appears at the end of our video and shows a Microbot planting the Google flag on the moon. The video was shot at our FRC team HQ in Regency Park, a corporate office building in Cary, NC.

Our logo is the three Microbots that appears on the bottom of the magazine cover. The Microbots were built as LEGO structures and are standing on the grey plates that we used to test our robot design.

You can find many of the video pieces as well as the submitted video at http://microbotsmoonbotschallenge2010.shutterfly.com/ (look for  Moonbots Video v05.wmv).

Our submitted video was posted on YouTube on May 28th (http://fllmicrobots.blogspot.com/2010/05/microbots-post-moonbots-research-video.html).

Go Microbots!

You guys did an AWESOME job editing! I looked at some of the other MoonBots team videos, too, and they are a lot of fun to watch! There were a lot of great ideas, too, but I still like ours best!!!

I really like our awesome robot, too! Thank you Mr. Miller for letting us do this challenge, and giving us all the cool robot pieces and the awesome new program to edit our video! It was a lot of fun! You're awesome!

I hope we get to go to Phase 2!!!

Go Microbots!

Gala

End of Phase 1

From the MoonBots blog:

Thank you all for all your hard work. The judges will be looking at your work over the next few days in order to decide the final 20 teams that will be moving on to Phase II. We will make an annoucement on or before June 21st.

Stay tuned. We hope you had fun and thanks again.


Like many of the MoonBot Challenge teams, we are eagerly awaiting the results of Phase 1. Will we be one of the lucky teams selected to move on? Looking around, there are so many good videos, web sites, and robot designs. Wow! So many teams worked hard to shine!

Our team is from three different areas of NC so it takes a lot of work to get together. But our parents were really cool. We met many times during the week and the weekend to get all of our video footage together.

Phase 1 closed Saturday morning at 2:59 am est. and Friday morning we still had a lot of editing. We had no idea how labor intensive the editing process would be. We spent the whole day trying to make our video exactly three minutes. It is amazing how much time that video editing takes.

Good luck to all of the teams! Being part of this competition was a lot of fun!

Tad

Microbots Post MoonBots Research Video

Finishing Moonbots Phase 1

It was so much fun making our video! Going over the video segments was a lot of fun, too! I'm really glad we planned it all out in advance though! I never would have guessed 3 minutes would fill up so fast!! I hope we get to move on to Phase 2 so we can use our bloopers in our Team Documentary! :P

I really hope we move on to Phase 2 mostly because I am really looking forward to programming our robot for the whole Challenge! I am totally excited about the camera and the compass! I have never programmed those components before and I think our newest build is totally ready for The Challenge!

I'm having a lot of fun! Thanks for inviting me to do Moonbots with you! Go Microbots!

Gala

Moving Forward With Moonbots

We are moving forward with our work on the LEGO robot design and video presentation. The script is now completed and we start video today. Gala has done an awesome job in getting all of this together. We may go shoot it over at the Turtle Nest or at my house. I am installing Adobe Premiere on my laptop to get ready to edit all of the parts. I have been thinking about whether to add animation or compose the music behind the credits. We will see how much time that we have.

The robot is just about done. Our original design just didn't get over the ridge in the center of the map so we changed it up a bit.We now have the camera attached and will do some programming today as well. We still have a lot to do and not much time left. It always seems like our meetings fly by.

The team is having a really great time and is really working hard. Zack and I have known each other for four years and really like building LEGO robots. Gala was part of our FRC team and is an awesome programmer, researcher, and brings everything together. I feel like we have all worked together for a long time!

Microbots to do Moonbots

A subset of the Microbots team is planning to do the Moonbots challenge.Right now, Tad, Zach, and Gala are signing up to build a robot to explore the moon's surface. This challenge is very similar to FLL.

We know that there is at least one other team from North Carolina. It should be fun to complete with them. Over the next couple of days, we will post our progress as we sign up for this marvelous challenge.

Tad (below) has begun to design the robot and all indications are that it will run on the rough surface that we will need to run on. There are no autonomous programs yet but using a bluetooth controller, we layed out a basic course for the robot. It can easier make its way through the obstacles.

Good luck to our fellow teams and we can't wait to compete with you (virtually) in stage 2 if we are invited.

First Lego League Expo at Crabtree Valley Mall

Tom Settle is amazing when it comes to organizing First Lego League events. For those of you who don't know Tom, he teaches classes around the triangle for new First Lego League team members. To recruit new FLL teams in NC, Tom held a mock tournament at the Crabtree Valley Mall on Sunday 9/13. Hundreds of people showed up to watch and Tom explained how FLL works for five hours.

Tom asked several people from area teams to participate in this event, including members of the Microbots, Spacebots, Megallan Mariners, Metalic Waves, Tie-Died Tangerines, and others. Tom interviewed the teams and the coaches. Additionally, several team members from Team Awkward Turtle FRC showed up to referee the mock tournament. Several Microbots brought their robot and attachments, but boy, we really had no idea what to expect!

Early morning setup

The kids had a blast! It was not about winning and losing but just about having a good time. The Lego Store set up a booth and gave out information about the NXT. Several folks committed to forming new teams. Joe Meno took pictures for the upcoming Brick Journal. It was fantastic!

Afterwards, we went to the Kanki steakhouse with Al Childers, coach of the Magellian Mariners and Kyle Brown, coach of the Spacebots. I believe that these teams may be favored to win the NC FLL State Championship this year (but this should serve to motivate your team to knock them off :-)). Both coaches are veterans with wonderful teams.

Chris Childers had dinner with us and we finally got the opportunity to thank him for all that he had done to inspire us our first year. Chris has video of the young Microbots working with the 2006 NC FLL State Champion Magellian Mariners. I look forward to possibly posting it soon.

Mastering First Lego League Part 2: Calibrating the Robot

This is the second in a series of articles about both basic and advanced techniques that can help your FIRST LEGO League team achieve mastery of the robot and the game. This article discusses the calibration of your robot as you prepare to solve this year’s challenges. It examines several aspects of robotics including the languages, drivers, motors, turns, and some of the elements that influence accuracy. In Part III of this on-going series, we will discuss the program framework, a necessary component for optimal robot running.

We finishing up the second installment of Mastering First Lego League for Brick Journal. This article also looks at things like batteries. We conducted a series of tests using Energizer Lithium Batteries. This article talks briefly about these tests and more tests will be forthcoming.

Mastering First Lego League

This month's Brick Journal features the first part of a series of articles about First Lego League. Part I starts with the expected "What is First Lego League?" However, instead of the dry, marketing information that this sort article generally solicits, we talk about some of the intrinsic values that make an FLL team successful. We also talk about setting expectations properly in your first year.



Next issue's article in this same series talks about "Calibrating the Robot" which will be released just in time for competition. Look for articles in future Brick Journal magazines about practical techniques for YAMs (Young Adult Mentors), programming, building robots, and how to get ready for competition.

Crabtree Valley Mall Lego Store

What does Raleigh, North Carolina have in common with Honolulu, Hawaii? They both have Lego Stores of course. If you have been following the Microbots, you'll see that they have been involved with the Crabtree Valley Mall Lego Store from its announcement. This month, we have a new announcement with respect to the Lego Store in Raleigh.

This month's community window features a First Lego Display that we put together. Among the displayed items is last year's North Carolina State Championship trophy. Additionally, you'll see our unique robot as well (trust me, it is one of a kind and way cool!). Stop by and check out the window in the back of the store.


By the way, we got the Smart Move challenge in the mail. It is too cool! Good luck to all of the teams this year! The Microbots are probably not going to compete. Some members seem to be moving on to FTC while others are moving on to FIRST with Team Awkward Turtle. But who knows, many a rock band has said that they are broken up only to have a reunion tour. Some of the team members are pursuing Smart Move just in case. We'll be at the Regional and State Championships either as competitors or volunteers.

Oh, and that is a gold NXT Brick! It was one of the things that made us stand out at the National Championship.

There is nothing micro about these bots

We went to the First LEGO® League United States Open Championship in Dayton and we had a blast! We all got into the "busmobile" and drove up with Joe Meno on Wednesday. There was a huge Gameboy battle going on in the car as we all joined in and played. Once we got to the hotel, we went swimming and then to bed.


Thursday began with a practice in a conference room. We hadn't finished our second run and so we worked on it quite a bit. In the afternoon, we went to the Air Force Museum and saw the big airplanes. After a movie at the Imax, we went back to work practicing our runs. We were trying to get a 400!


On Friday, we were all tired from staying up way too late but we had to do our interviews. The research interview is our best so it was great that it was first. We thought that we did quite well and it gave us a lot of energy for the next one, the technical interview. We were happy with that one too. Finally, we had the teamwork interview and it was great too! Back to work on our runs.


On Friday night, we met with our alliance partners. We were all so tired and so we pretty much went to bed and let Rebekah organize the alliance runs. She worked with our two younger partners and really showed how we work. Clark and Benjamin went up to the rooms and got Mohawks to show their team spirit! We had to be our best for the runs on Saturday.


Our first run was 105 and it was great! We were getting 40s in practice so maybe we just set a low bar. The judges were very precise about the scoring rules so points were tougher to get. More work and the next run was 210. What an improvement! Our third run was a disappointing 150. It was ok though, we never gave up! Patrick gave it everything that he had to get Joe (our robot) back on track.


Finally, it was time for the awards. All the research awards were given out and we didn't win one. They were down to two categories, teamwork and overall.

"This home school team might not be large in numbers, but their team strength is not micro. Their vacuum cleaner team activity even passed dust particles from member to member. Team work demonstrated fluid movements with high energy with little effort."

We knew when they talked about our vaccuum cleaner (this was our team project) that we had gotten first place in the teamwork category! It was great! What a terrific end to the season!


It was a great tournament! We felt that it was our responsibility to represent our state the best that we could through gracious professionalism. We also wanted to get a 400. We did get our 400, not on the table, but in the teamwork. There isn't a better 400 than that!

The tournament was so well run and organized! Thank you Kathy Levine and Joe Meno! Thank you to our alliance partners! Thanks to all of the teams and staff that made this so memorable!

Go Big Red

We enjoyed spending time at the U.S. Open National Championship with our alliance partners, the Lightning Stars(Omaha, NE) and the Wagga Wagga Warriors(Oak Ridge, TN). We learned so much from you and you both define the spirit of gracious professionalism! Thank you so much for cheering for us and coming over to see us after the awards! You are truly great teams! Please keep in touch!


Go Big Red!

Your friends,
The Microbots
(Rebekah, Zach, Patrick, Benjamin, Clark, and Tad)
PS Thank you Magellan Mariners for teaching us (during our first year) the right way to run an alliance round. We didn't win but we had more fun than any other alliance partnership. We hope that we correctly passed on the lesson to our alliance partners.

Representing North Carolina

Perhaps nothing is more wonderful than receiving the support of our fellow FLL teams from North Carolina. We are heading to Dayton in three days and several teams from our state sent us emails wishing us luck! We thank them for all of their kind words and for taking the moment to wish us well. They truly define gracious professionalism and the FLL values! We would not be the team that we are if it were not for the excellence of our peers in NC. Thank you again for setting such a great example and for the friendly competition and cooperation. You have made the 2008-2009 FLL season stellar!

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Go get 'em Microbots!

Thanks for the update, Mike. We'll be praying not only that you represent NC well, but especially bring glory to our Lord Jesus Christ in how you conduct yourselves.

In His service,

Ken - Techno Alliance

____________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _

Good Luck to the Microbots at the U.S. Open National Championship! It sounds like your hard work and determination have paid off! We're proud to have you represent NC! Have a fun and safe trip!

Mayberry Maniacs I and II
Karen T. Hodges, Coach
J. Sam Gentry Middle School
Mount Airy, NC

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On behalf of the Terminators, the SmartBots, and We the People, and all of us FLL-types at the Scholars' Academy, good luck to the Microbots.

************ ********* ********* ********* *****
David Johnston
Technology Administrator
Metrolina Regional Scholars' Academy

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Good luck from the Magellan Mariners! Be sure to send some photo and place you 400 on YouTube! The kids (and many others) would love to see it.

Best of luck,
Your Magellan Mariner Friends
Al, Eric, Chris and the rest of the gang.

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GOOD LUCK!!!

And have FUN! What a great finale for your team!! NC is behind you every LEGO brick of the way : )

Keeps us posted on how it all transpires!
Marie Hopper

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