Crazy Weekend Part 1: Robotics

Last weekend was the culmination of several months of craziness: robotics team meetings and Nutcracker rehearsals, endless details to manage (where in town can I buy a pink leotard? tri-fold presentation boards? Do I have all of the team permission slips filled out?) Of course, it was all worth it as we headed off to the regional robotics competition with our team Veni Vidi Roboti excited to see their robot on the field and present their research project, and as Asa took the stage in her first dance solo.

Unfortunately, bad weather in the form of horrifying ice and sleet made the roads a skating rink (32 accidents in one stretch of I-5 alone) and this complicated our plans greatly. The night before the robotics tournament, we still weren't sure if it was even going to occur, but finally after 3 hours of delays, the tournament did take place on Saturday for which I was very grateful. These kids have worked way too hard to miss out on competing!

The team had a great time at the tournament. They really impressed me with their morale, their coolness under difficult circumstances, their ability to work as a team, and their overall positive and encouraging attitude. Unfortunately, the robot took on a mind of its own at the tournament, with programs that worked fine on the practice table suddenly going haywire on the actual competition table. It was very frustrating for the kids, but they really were very professional about it all. I was extremely proud, both as a coach and as a parent, of this team. I know that we coaches really did our job well not when the robot scored high (it didn't), but when the kids accepted what had happened, worked to fix what they could, and moved forward with a positive attitude. This is not easy for adult engineers, so to see a team of kids accomplish this was impressive.

Of course, the robot performance is only 25% of the total competition, with the rest coming from the teamwork judging, robot technical judging, and the research project presentation judging. I knew the team would knock the socks off of the judges in those areas and they did. They ended up winning first place in the research project category. I haven't posted anything about their project up until now, because I didn't want to give away their subject publicly. The theme this year was transportation, they were to identify a transportation problem in their community, and propose a solution for that problem. Almost all of the teams at the competition chose things like pedestrian safety, school bus scheduling, walking and biking to school, etc. Well, our team chose the solar system as their community, and the problem of orbital debris (or "space junk") as the problem. Their research involved things like calling up a NASA representative, metal recycling specialists, and arranging a tour for themselves at a local metal recycling facility. They really poured a lot of energy into this project and it showed. I'll have to post the text of it here later this week as it was truly impressive. I could tell the judges were really impressed with what they had accomplished.

Lastly, the icing on the cake for the competition was that they got a Core Values Nomination from the head judge. FLL takes their core values very seriously, and they place a big emphasis on teams exhibiting these values, including the value of "gracious professionalism" which means competing like crazy but respecting and exchanging ideas with your competing teams. Here you can see a moment that occured in a hallway between competition rounds where our team and another got a moment to discuss their robot designs. This is really what FLL is all about, right here, the learning and growth that occurs when these kids share what they've learned with each other.

Before we went to this competition, I had told the team that I didn't care a bit if they won or were the absolute last on the robot table, but if they came away from the competition having done their best and worked well as a team I would be very happy. Well, they accomplished all of that and then some, and as always I'm honored to have been a part of their journey, and very proud of all the work that they put into this competition. Having the head judge acknowledge their teamwork and core values really just confirmed what I knew about these great kids.

Enter the Crazy Week

One week from today until the robotics team goes to the State championships. I've got a million details going through my head, and the kids are getting excited. They've polished up a couple of programs and added a couple more, added a few details to their research project presentation, and now it's just down to making pit table decorations, costumes, and stuff to hand out to other teams. Fun stuff! But for me, it includes making sure I've got all the paperwork, directions, hotel reservations, bins, boxes, and stuff ready to go. Enter the crazy week!

They Did It Again!!!!!

I'm still trying to wrap my head around this one, but the kids won the robotics tournament yesterday. As in got the champion's award. Wow!

The tournament was very up and down for them. They were the first ones to go through project judging, and the judges seemed kind of "eh", but maybe they were still waking up. Regardless, the kids did great in the project (I think!). For one thing, they memorized all of the lines for their play, and some of them (most especially Asa, the narrator) had a LOT of lines.

Then they went on to technical judging, which I think they really aced. Although they're a pretty young team, they attempted a lot more technical sophistication this year, using sensors, loops, variables, and subroutines in their programs. They all explained themselves very well, and the fact that they each wrote their own programs was a real bonus I think. Mackenzie was able to explain to one of the judges his program that used input from a sensor that fed into a decision tree and executed one of several sub-routines, and I could see that the judge was really impressed.

In teamwork judging, I know they did awesome. It's clear that these kids are all good friends and they work together very well. As always, I am proudest of the fact that they are a great team and are positive to each other and to all the other teams there.

On the robot table, their first run was an unmitigated disaster. I think they scored 20 points, LOL. That's out of the 170 they could get if all of their missions went well. One of Mackenzie's programs that we thought operated within the rules was ruled otherwise by a judge, and a well-meaning volunteer interrupted one of Mikke's programs with a ruling that was then over-ruled by the head judge mid-round. So it was very confusing. Their second round wasn't much better, with Asa's program going haywire for unexplained reasons.

By that time they decided to head to the practice room and re-write some stuff in the 30 minute break between rounds. Mackenzie re-wrote his program to conform to the new interpretation of the rule, and I tried to soothe the kids' ruffled feathers. They felt like things were being changed right out from under them, and I explained that it might not be entirely unintentional. After all, in the real world when you're an engineer you might work on a project for months only to have the marketing team come tell you that due to their latest focus group or marketing survey you now need to rework it an entirely different way, or discard those features and write entirely new ones. It's good for them to be able to quickly re-think their strategies or re-work their programs. After that, they buckled down and got to work and their last table run was much much better.

It was clear that all of the teams were struggling with this year's table, which seemed much harder than last year. So I knew that even if we weren't scoring as high as we'd hoped to, the other teams were in more or less the same pickle. I figured we had a good chance of being a runner-up and going to the state tournament, but when they announced the runners-up and we weren't in there, I wasn't sure what to think. But as it turns out, they did it again and won the overall champion's award. They didn't score the highest on the table, same as last year, but their work on all aspects of the project including trying our best to exemplify the FLL core values pulled them through!

I just looked through all of the photos which are so great, and will have to post some soon. Right now though I'm just so proud of all the work these kids have done!

Insanity, Continued

Five kids, a mom/coach, a car, lots of sleet, rain, and wind, darkness, an hour and a half drive, a motel where the power keeps fluctuating due to the storm, and a robotics tournament tomorrow.

Actually, the kids are having a blast. They're in the hotel room playing D&D and just generally having a fun time. They've all worked so hard in the last two weeks, with robotics team practice several days in a row each week. Their research project is simply awesome (I'll share after the tournament) and their robot runs have been getting better and better (although as the team is largely young and pretty new to this, it's not quite as advanced as some teams will surely be.) More than anything, they're having fun and really enjoying the experience.

I'll update after the tournament tomorrow!

Our New FLL Robotics Team Blog

We've been up and programming (not to mention building, researching, and planning) with this year's FLL Robotics team. The team has chosen their new name: Veni, Vidi, Roboti (I came, I saw, I built a robot) and I've got a new blog up for the team with some photos and video of one of the challenges we build from the Mayan Adventure NXT book this summer. I'll be adding more as the team progresses into this year's Climate Challenge season.

Inspired

Ever since we've gotten back from the FLL World Festival, Mackenzie has been working with the robot. Inspired by a team that used the ultrasonic sensor, he hooked one up to our 'bot and wrote a program that navigates around the house by sampling the sensor and if it encounters an obstacle it backs up and turns in another direction. It does have a slight problem with stairs (going down), not unlike my kids when they were small.

It's one of the greatest testimonials to the wonderful competitors at the World Fest that the kids came back so energized and inspired. We will be presenting our experiences to the Eugene Kiwanis group next month, and are also planning a public presentation to get more kids and potential coaches involved in starting up their own FLL teams. Mackenzie has already been talking with younger neighborhood kids and he is thinking about mentoring them as a JFLL team as well. Exciting stuff!

We're Back, Many Amazing Tales to Tell

There were 81 teams at the World Festival from the 11,000 FLL teams around the world. Our team made friends with teams from the Northwest that were on our airplane (big wave to the Gothic Lawn Gnomes and Fire Breathing Rubber Duckies, who were awesome!) an all-girls team from Saudi Arabia staying in our hotel, and the team from Mexico that had the pit table right next to ours. All of these teams had won their region or country's championships to get there and they were not just technically incredible (!!!!) but wonderfully nice kids. It was such an amazing experience, we're all still processing it, but I will put up a slide show as soon as I can make it through the 600 photos I took and cull out some great ones. To walk up the ramp into the Georgia Dome with these kids and compete on the floor with teams from all over the world was just incredible, and made all the hard work of the last few weeks really worth it.

There were also over 300 teams of the high school age robotics championships (working with much bigger robots, some the size of small refridgerators!) and the kids were really impressed with them and are excited about future opportunities as they get older as well.

One Step Ahead of Total Chaos

We leave for Atlanta in a week and one day! Having just got back from D.C. last weekend, and having a ton of stuff to do as the coach of a Team in Training triathlon team (a position I took on when I had absolutely no idea that our kids would end up going to this robotics World Festival thingie), and having our usual activities and homeschooling and all that, I feel like I'm just one step ahead of a gigantic rolling 8-Ball. I know once we get to the World Festival, it will be a total blast. The kids are very excited about meeting other teams from around the country and around the world, and they've been working very hard on their robot.

That's one thing I'm always excited and impressed with about our team. They're never content to just rest on their laurels, they're always trying to improve. When we won the Regional Tournament, our robot's top score was 230 points. We mostly won on the strength of our research project and our 100% teamwork score. At State, the kids had added programs and totally re-worked our table run, and the robot scored 290 points, which they were extremely excited about. Of course, the team that won state managed a whopping 400 points, wow. This last couple of weeks they have been working hard to implement two new missions, and that brings our best table run up to 325 points. We all know we won't be in the league of some of the incredible teams at Worlds, but I am very proud of them all for continuing to improve on their robot's performance and on the number of missions they're attempting. They are awesome!

15 Minutes of Fame

Every day that goes by with this robotics team, I see what an amazing experience it is for our kids. It has been opening up whole new vistas lately. This week, the team was invited to give their research project presentation to the supervisors and managers meeting of our local utility company. There were about 75 people there, and they were wonderfully supportive and interested in what these kids had to say. A local TV station showed up and filmed and interviewed the team members, and they put a spot on the evening news. The kids were all very impressively self-composed, though we all talked about how nervous we were afterwards. They did great, and came across with their usual enthusiasm.

















A man from the utility company is helping the kids with adding a cost/benefit analysis to their research project, and I think he will be a wonderful contact to have as the team goes forward. He came to our practice last week and gave the kids some great feedback on their project. As the next year's theme is also energy-related (global warming), I feel that we've forged some connections that will be really helpful to the team in our next season as well!

Up For the Challenge

We had our first robotics team meeting yesterday, looking forward to the World Festival next month. The kids were raring to go! Not content to rest on their laurels, they want to tackle even more of the mission challenges, and add in a cost/benefit analysis for their research project. A man from our local utility company's education and outreach program visited our team meeting yesterday. He's willing to help the kids with the cost/benefit analysis, and the team will also be doing a presentation at the utility company next week! They are also going to be one of our major sponsors.

So far, we've raised about half of the money that we need to get to the World Festival, with three sponsors of $500 or more, and a bunch of people contributing smaller amounts. It's wonderful to see the kind of support that can come out of your own community for an opportunity like this for the kids. We've also heard from many business owners, friends, and family about their own interests in the fields of engineering and sustainable energy. This opportunity to go to the World Festival is expanding the kids' world in many ways - allowing them to do further community outreach than we ever had planned for the team initially. Also, at the world festival, they will have an additional "Alliance" mission challenge, where they will be paired with several other teams from different places in the country or world. What an incredible opportunity for them to get to know team members from different places! I'm sure you can tell from my overabundant use of exclamation marks that I am very excited for our kids and for the team over these amazing possibilities that have been opening up before us.