Blog | Black Thunder

3 More Sessions To Go! FLL The team is making the final tweaks to the robot. Like lowering the linear actuator and making the robot wider for the bridge to lift up the flags. We are also making preparations for all the presentations at the regionals in north London. The robot design summary is finished and the core values is finished. We are now ready to present it to the judges at the regionals. We have also counted the amount of points we could receive if everything went to plan and the big number is 200 points.  SUMO COMPETITION The teams have been able to organise more friendly battles by themselves with their new and improved robots. One teams pusher is very good as it has a ton of torque. The robot has a lot of shielding and it barely moves as it has too much torque it can't move. 

Major Improvements FLL With one and a half weeks left till FLL on the 8th December, this week- today- we are starting to make the positioning grid for our robot to put on the City Shaper Mat. We also continue to run testing of code and we are running a systematic improvement system on where to position our robot on the base area on the City Shaper Mat. We have also created subroutine (function) to use in other areas of our code. The function allows the linear actuator in the attachment for the My Blocks to move up and down. SUMO The competitors have been making repairs and changing different aspects of their bots since their robots, since some teams had a hard time while trying to fight and difficulty in manoeuvring their bots during SUMO fighting rounds.Some teams have added pointless attachments, but others have completely changed their mainframe structure and exoskeleton around the bot and one team had begun to reinforce their medium motor attachment; a pusher. The teams...

2 Weeks Left! FLL The attachment used for the the crane is also going to be used for the house, the swing and the equilibrium thing. Filing in a total of 55 more points, 20 from the swing, 20 from the equilibrium thing and 15 from the house  as the attachment can one take away 3 legs with the house still standing.  SUMO Competition The teams had a lesson on gears and what gearbox to use for what outcome. For example, if the motor is connected to a small gear which connects to a bigger gear, there will be less speed but more power and vice versa. The first match today was between Ultra-Destroyers and Electro-Killers. Following Wednesday's improvements and blank slates the robots were firing to fight again.

 Project Progress Sida has been refining his parking bot app ready to be released on the google play store soon. He has also been debugging the code. We have also added interchangeable separable ends on the linear actuator lift system for lifting the house on mission nine. Sumo The teams have been making more upgrades as their are no battles on Wednesday. One team has started adding suspension to their tank tracks.  They are also upgrading their weapons, Some teams are even restarting their robots as the have found out that they have a lot of weaknesses     

Progress! FLL The team improved the design for the lifting attachment of the robot, we will have 2 of the same attachment but on one the two ends of the attachment are detached so can move on their own. This allows us to do the crane task very quickly as we no longer have to re position the robot to flip different switches. We have been able to attach a board onto the same attachment to serve as a placing attachment for the bat on the tree, the drone and the house demolish task. SUMO Competition After the repairs made on Friday, the teams were ready to fight once again, new match ups were made and this time were on a time based system so that each match was at most 6 minutes long.  Every robot fought at least once today and points were allocated to each team,3 for a win, 1 for a draw and 0 for a loss. The overall winner for today was team Annihilator.

Stumped! FLL The lift attachment for the FLL bot was a bit buggy in the code. When the bot was moving, the attachment would move up and down. The team crowded around one computer to sort out the code but after several minutes spent puzzling over the code, the attachment bug was fixed and worked almost perfectly - with the occasional odd disalignment or two.  SUMO Competition The competitors are making much needed general repairs to their robot, as well as rethinking key components of robot design after the first few rounds. One team has taken out their wheels and added tracks, prioritising stability over speed . This allowed their bot to be lower to the ground and therefore less susceptible to flippers. One other team has added three claws to the front of the bot - a flashy weapon, but whose effectiveness remains to be seen. A member of the FLL team was meant to give a presentation to the year 7 and 8 competitors but no-one had made a presentation, so quickly one person ma...

FLL We have been making attachments for lifting tasks using gears and medium motors. We have also been improving our runs which involve stacking the mission models. We have also been coding the lifting mechanism to make it more efficient, along with improving other pieces of code and attachments. SUMO In Sumo this week, we have started real battles and so far there are a few who need to work on their robot, but a few who are showing everyone who the winner is. 'Stupidly Low Velocity and 'Ultra-Destroyers' are looking to be the most successful, but some teams are yet to play. On Friday we will continue the competition and will see what happens next.

Revving to go FLL SUMO Competition The teams are getting ready to battle once again and after changing tyres, making spare weapons will be ready to fight once again. From today a router for the SUMO teams will be set up to make the sessions more orderly and less hectic. Every Friday will be a lesson from one of the FFL team, Wednesday will be for their weapons and other attachments while on Mondays they will be left on their own to do their own thing.

Crash-Testing  FLL Starting to do the runs and find out the most effective code for those runs along with the minor adjustments needed to perfect the bot. The code for the runs has been being made since week 5 and is finally ready to be tested.  SUMO Competition The SUMO bots are set to challenge each other again but for real this time. This news has hyped up every competitor who are desperately finishing of their bots to be ready to re battle others. There had been a clear winner in previous battles but now that the other teams have seen how it is, they might have found a strategy to beat the ULTRA DESTROYER.

The project slideshow.  Sida has been typing up the presentation on Parking Bot, an app that runs on your phone and can detect parking spaces by utilising AI and machine learning. A future improvement could be being able to read signs and tell what types of parking spaces their are for example disabled and permit spaces. Sida has been training  parking bot with 12000 pictures which took over 1 day. SUMO The teams have been finishing their robots in preparation for their upcoming bots for the rest of the term. They have also been changing their robots e.g the way they geared the robot. Some teams have been very innovative in their ideas. Many teams have not been participating in sumo because their robots have had to been rebuilt.