(During lockdown, Our team communicates mostly through Slack. Tales from the Slack are long posts from the mentors to team members. They sum up the last Virtual Meet Up, and provide a focus for progress for the upcoming week. For the purposes of the this blog, they provide a good update on the team's progress.) Good morning, nerds!
It's half term, so your brains are probably turning to mush. Let's unmush them with some mother-lovin robotics. Yeehaw!
Charlie and I have read the rules and the challenges, and now I'm issuing challenges of my own to you team members.
1) The Arena. Three out of four challenges need a 1.5m x 1.5m square with 5cm walls (the fourth is a self made obstacle course, big as you like). I bought the materials for the main arena over the weekend.
2) The Robot. The first order of business when designing a robot is to ask “what does it need to do?” There's no point building a Dalek if the main challenge is to go up and down stairs, amirite? So, first thing we have to do is break the challenges down into individual tasks.
3) The Challenges.
- Feed the Fish - Drive, Aim, Shoot. However, unlike previous shooting challenges (knock over the targets), this one is more like basketball accuracy (lob upwards into a box) for the big points.
- Tidy Up the Toys - Drive, Collect & Deposit Objects, Identify Colour. This one's a bit like the barrel sorter from last year. Collect a Red, Green and Blue cube and place them in the “toy box” in a particular order. Can be done remote or autonomous (bigger points for auto)
- Up the Garden Path - Drive a twisty path to the finish. In order of points, it can be accomplished by remote control (lowest), preprogrammed route, line following, camera, or audio commands (highest).
- DIY Obstacle Course - Must contain obstacles (bumps and holes), level changes (ramps, steps) and different terrains (sand, stones). More points for course ingenuity, imagination and humour. Again, can be done autonomously, remote or audio commands.
Then there's judging for Technical and Artistic Merit and Blogging.
So, Team STEV3:
Can each team member claim ONE of these challenges?
- Follow the link to study your challenge
- Look at max points for each challenge
- Think of multiple ways to solve each
- Consider the elements of a robot that would complete your challenge. Just think about your challenge, not the others, and we'll combine designs as a group.
Get on this today instead of playing Among Us!
Post designs, images, thoughts, etc. I'll get back in here and we'll arrange a Google Hangout in the near future.
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