FLL Smart Moves

Here are the FLL Smart Moves 2009 videos that explain the missions in this year's challenge:

FLL MISSION: GAIN ACCESS TO PLACES:




FLL MISSION: GAIN ACCESS TO THINGS (ACCESS MARKERS):



FLL MISSION: GAIN ACCESS TO THINGS (LOOPS):



FLL MISSION: AVOID IMPACT-WARNING BEACONS (BONUS):



FLL MISSION: AVOID IMPACT-SENSOR WALLS (AVOIDANCE OPTION):




FLL MISSION: SURVIVE IMPACT-SENSOR WALLS (IMPACT OPTION):



FLL MISSION: SURVIVE IMPACT-VEHICLE IMPACT TEST:



FLL MISSION: SURVIVE IMPACT-SINGLE PASSENGER RESTRAINT TEST:



FLL MISSION: SURVIVE IMPACT-MULTIPLE PASSENGER SAFETY TEST:

St. Francis Robotics - House Mission 2009

This mission completes 6 tasks at once: delivers the bike, insulation and laptop, while opening the window, turning off the lights and raising the house using pneumatics on the attachment. A total of 100 points.

Calibrating NXT motors

I always wonder why some of the robots my students build often don't go perfectly straight. It seems that not all NXT motors are created equally. This article from TechBrick.com explains how to calibrate the NXT motors to find out which ones match each other most closely:

Simple NXT Calibration: Look Ma! No Tools!

Line Following Chalenge

My students at MUN Lifelong Learning used the light sensor on an NXT robot to complete a line following challenge. They had to start the robot on the red circle, find the starting position on the oval, follow the line around the oval, and have the robot finish on the red circle.

Here are videos from Groups 1 & 2:

The Scroll Challenge

My students at MUN Lifelong Learning used the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT kit to complete the Scroll Challenge from James Floyd Kelly's book, LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT: The Mayan Adventure. The students built a simple arm and attached it to a motor on their robot. The robot then had to move in between two boxes and lift the scroll of paper off the boxes and bring it back to start.

Skills Canada Newfoundland & Labrador: 12TH Annual Provincial Skills Competition: Robotics

The Skills Canada Newfoundland & Labrador: 12TH Annual Provincial Skills Competition was held on April 3, 2009. Robotics is one of the competitions and this year students had to design and build a robot that would pick up tennis balls and drop them into a slot in the center of the field area. The teams that competed were from:

• Ascension Collegiate (Bay Roberts)
• Carbonear Collegiate
• Botwood Collegiate
• Marystown Central High
• O'Donel High School (Mount Pearl)
  

I had permission form the organizers to take some videos with my Flip Ultra Video camera and post them to our blog. Here are 3 videos that I quickly threw together with little editing:







For more information please visit Skills Canada Newfoundland & Labrador (http://www.skillscanada-nfld.com/).

LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT: The Mayan Adventure

To my surprise and delight, Google Books has a preview of one of my favourite NXT books, LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT: The Mayan Adventure, by James Floyd Kelly. It is a great way to combine storytelling and learning about NXT robotics. I have used a few of the challenges in the books in the courses I teach and I particularly like the stringbot.