Blog | Black Thunder

Internationals Suspended Unfortunately, the news came in that this First season has been suspended due to the Corona virus outbreak and therefore none of the International events will happen for now. Even then, the UK has banned all international school trips in precaution of the virus. Though this means that we probably won't be going to internationals, we will continue to finish NOVA; our new Robot. We are also working on building a Rubiks cube solving robot for a fun, side project.. We will continue to update the situation as to whether this First season will stay suspended.

Internationals Week 3 - 2 Building Work continues on nova as we have finished the back and some of the side plating of the robot.The front wall with the motor attached to it is being worked on. This is because it is easier to have one fixed motor and one moving motor  then two stationary motors on the robot. The wall is very useful as it can be used for every mission as for the stacks it won't need to be moved. and we can attach the stacks attachment to it.  Project We are contacting professionals to see if there are any improvements can be made to our app. We called the local university and they have put us in contact with a professor that gives lectures there. We hope that he gives us his honest opinions so we can impress the judges in Rio.

NOVA in Progress Building Again, today we focused mostly on building, as building the new bot (called Nova) is our highest priority. We have begun to connect the motors to the brick using wires, so that we can build around the base structure of the robot, without having to worry about fitting in the wires afterwards. This will make building our robot more time efficient, due to the fact that NOVA will be ready to test code as soon as possible. Also, using feedback from Nationals, we are taking inspiration to make our bot from the internet and including elements of different robots, making sure it is an original, but still taking and expanding on what we have learned. Core Values Today, we all displayed our core value of Inclusion, where all of us were collaborating and working together, to maximise productivity. This led to some people building or assembling parts onto NOVA, building parts separately and getting the pieces themselves. Due to this, we also did one of the most...

Core Values For Core Values, we had to do a task and answer questions. We entered the judging area with our impressive banners and begun with an initial introduction. We then did the task which was to make the tallest free-standing structure possible with paper and paper clips. We split into different roles, such as leader, time keeper and builder. We then folded each of our pieces of paper in to triangular prisms and solidified them with paper clips. We then stacked them horizontally, 2 per layer, in a cross. Using this technique, we manged to make a rather tall and definitely strong structure out of paper. Finally, we answered some questions and were on our way.

Nationals - Robot Design 1st Place! Yesterday, on the 22/2/2020, Black Thunder went to compete in the National Championship for England and Wales, at the University of the West of England. When the 9 of us, along with 4 mentors and coaches, arrived, we unloaded our minibus and headed to the pits. We then attended the opening ceremony and a member of our team proudly carried out banner proclaiming us to be the Champions of the North London Regional. The first event in our timetable was our first Robot Game at 10'o'clock and though we went in with high hopes, we only scored 120 points. This was disappointing, but we still had more events to compete for and had more opportunities to improve our robot score.  Next, we had our Innovation Project, which was the Parking Bot app (available on the Google Play Store). Our presentation went quite well and we received some feedback that would come in very useful for internationals. Following that, we had our second robot game, in whic...

Competition Day Yesterday eight of us went to the FFL regional competition in The American School In London, there were many teams, half of them from that very school. Our first match at 9:55 went horribly wrong as we had some wrong information that we could touch the bot in the placing area as we thought it was a also part of base. Through this we lost 60 points putting us in 6th place. Immediately after the first match we had our core values presentation, in which we were split in two, one part had to make an animal while the other a habitat for that animal. The two teams were allowed to communicate but cold not see what the other was making. This in its core idea was a team building exercise. At 10:55 we had our second match in which we improved our score by 25 putting us in 4th place. Next we had our robot design segment in which we had to present our bot and why we had made it as we did, the two judges drilled us looking at the functionality of our code and efficiency of our ...

Posters Core Values Toady we have been working on our core values poster (left). We have split into 6 groups, with each one working on a different part of the poster: Discovery, Coopertition, Inclusion, Integration, Team Spirit and Extra info. Everyone in the team is putting in money to have the poster printed as we are a mainly self-funded team. The Other One  After the core values poster, we created the other poster, which can be seen on the left. this poster includes more general information about the team itself. The poster includes fun facts and school info as well as other more general information about us and our FLL.