Blog | Black Thunder

Sensor Types And Their Uses Colour-Coordinated Attachments The team has started working on attachments for missions 11 & 12, which are on run 1 (which they decided last week). They are thinking of the colours for the attachments for all the runs. We also added a colour sensor to our robot for last year's FLL, so that it would be quicker to change to different coded runs. They have also been brainstorming ideas for both robot design and the project. Sumo Improvement Ideas Some of the SUMO teams have had ideas to improve their robots - like how to gear their wheels; some of the groups are now trying to gear their robots for torque, which is pushing force, and can be achieved by putting a small gear on the motor and a big gear on the wheel. This creates torque because there is less rotation on the small gear, compared to a lot of rotation on the wheel - which then results in a pushing force called torque. 

Attachments FLL The FLL group is using the map to plan the routes for the competition. Using last time's data the group has worked out an efficient way to achieve points easily but achieve maximum of points each run. The strategic runs will let us finish the missions that need the same attachments on the same run, as well as getting a good number of points in the time frame. SUMO Competition The lesson the competitors of the SUMO competition are learning this week is about attachments. They learned how to optimise the use of their medium motor to amplify their attacks and maybe speed or agility. This is crucial, as in the competition the robots have to try and push the others out of the area; a strategy is to play cat and mouse until the other bot accidentally goes out of the area. For this to be achieved, speed and agility are key.

Map and attack Figuring out the missions - FLL The FLL group is continuing to figure out which missions are most efficient for number of points as to finalise the attachments to the robot. SUMO competition Most teams in the competition are working on their weapon attachments. One is a drill that will spin and another is a spinning claw. The weapons will form major parts of their robots; they will be the things that allow them to get points in the competition at the end of December.

Lightning Lego Recolouring the Robot - FLL Today, Harry recoloured the robot to fit the colour theme of our team; black and yellow. Dan and Rishab were looking at the map for the competition, trying to figure the most efficient uses of attachments to the robots for the best amount of points. We made a list of the tasks needing to be performed and ordered them by the amount of points each one is worth. Through this they will work out what attachments to use and in what order to do the tasks. SUMO Competition The SUMO competition today focused on the structural integrity of the robot; each team had 10 minutes to make the strongest structure they could. One team is taking an approach that makes a cage of triangles around the robot. A side task the year 7s and 8s are involving themselves in is making a robot with caterpillar wheels using instructions from the Lego mindstorms website.

Introduction to Robotics Club New FLL Team As today was the first meeting back after the school holidays, we introduced the younger years to robotics club, and to the First Lego League. We have almost completely re-vamped our Team, with six new members. we have explained what the FLL is, and the different sections we have to complete for it; Robot game, Project, Core values and Robot design. SUMO Competition The rest of the members (mostly year seven and eights) of robotics club are competing in a SUMO competition using EV3 kits that the club has from previous years of FLL. The year sevens and eights arranged themselves in teams of 6 to 8. After the FLL has finished, we will be running an FLL re-run for them. This will include building and coding robots to do this year's FLL tasks.

Final Preparations Project Presentation Today the team had a run through of the project run through. The run through was watch by one of our physics teachers, she gave use some areas of improvement, which we started to work on straight away as to get it finished before nationals tomorrow. The team also checked all of the runs and they all seemed to be fine, hopefully the robot wont decide to wobble off course like it did in regionals! New Jumpers! Today we also received the Reading School jumpers that we ordered from the RSPA (Reading School Parents Association) along with a complementary  EV3 set. They also took some team photos which will hopefully be posted on their Facebook page.

Fine Tuning Runs Touch Sensor The building team have installed a touch sensor. This is for regulating the position of the attachment that is used for our third one. The sensor detects when a part of the attachment hits it and stops the arm moving down wards, this is to control the positioning of the arm. The coding team have also been working on making the second run much more reliable than it is, mainly by changing turning variables and moving distances. Sumo Competition  The Year seven and eights who are taking part in the sumo competition have started to battle each other. In the first match, one teams robot had its wires pulled out of their sockets. After the match this team stared to build a cage around their robot that would act as a shield. One teams robot has a very large hammer that looks very formidable.