FLL Body Forward 2010 Challenge

One of my favourite times of the year is here once again. The FIRST LEGO League (FLL) challenge for 2010 has been released and this year’s theme is about biomedical engineering called Body Forward. Here is a list of resources that teams should visit:

FLL Body Forward 2010 Challenge (http://www.firstlegoleague.org/media/twocol.aspx?id=247) - On this official FLL page is all the information your team needs. It includes a section on the Robot Game with all the missions and rules explained with . There is also some important information about the Project.

TechBrick (http://www.techbrick.com/) - This is an awesome site with lots of great resources for teams competing in Body Forward. It includes sample scoring sheets, worksheets, and tips to help your team.

FLL Body Forward Scorer iPhone/iPod App by Sachin Patel (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fll-body-forward-scorer/id391265188?mt=8) - I used Sachin’s app for last year’s challenge and it was a great help keeping the scoring straight. This year’s app looks just as useful and Sachin has an update for the app already waiting approval in the iTunes Store.

The NXT Step Blog (http://www.thenxtstep.blogspot.com/) - This is one of my favourite NXT robotics sites to visit. I own several of the NXT robots books written by some of the blog contributors. James Floyd Kelly’s book, LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT: The Mayan Adventure, has been especially useful in my courses about NXT robotics.

FLL also has a good YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/FLLGlobal#p/c/ECD69862A53BE66D).

Well, that should get any FLL team off and running. Good luck to all FLL teams!

TechBrick: Body Forward Challenge 2010-11

TechBrick is a great resource for teams involved in the FIRST LEGO League (FLL) and NL Skills Canada LEGO Robotics competitions held in Newfoundland and Labrador. They have posted resources to help out with this year's challenge:

• Resources for the FLL 2010-11 Body Forward Challenge;

Again this year I hope to use this site to help teams out across the province as we prepare for competition so please check back regularly.

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: