Month: September 2017

Thursday, the girls worked together to figure out how to square their robot to a black line on the field. This is useful for orienting the robot again after going a long distance or turning.

They have a color sensor associated with each drive wheel on their test robot. Their strategy is to move forward until the first light sensor sees the black line and stop the wheel on that side. The other wheel keeps moving until its sensor also sees the black line. Because the first wheel may have moved a bit while waiting for the second wheel to align, they repeat this strategy two more times — first moving to the white line adjacent to the black line, and then moving back to the black line again. It’s not perfect, but pretty good.

One group of girls programmed the Align routine, another group worked on prototyping attachments, and a third group brainstormed project topics. About halfway through the meeting, groups two and three swapped.

All-in-all it was a very productive day and the girls had fun.

FIRST Lego League has eight Core Values. They guide how we do what we do. Today we read and discussed them. Over the course of the season, we will strive to practice these core values in the lab, at home, in school, and everywhere we work and play.

We gathered around the table and reviewed the rules for each mission. Each Lassie has three missions to know well, we call them mission gurus. They are responsible for knowing the rules and setup for their mission. At a tournament, each mission guru will verify that their mission models are properly assembled and set up. The guru may not be the one writing the programs to accomplish their missions, but they are the primary “customer” that insures the solutions meet the criteria.

Today’s goal was to finish building all of the mission models. The girls worked hard and succeeded. They can now begin to think about mission strategies and robot requirements.