Before the competition

This is Alex. For the whole month leading up to the tournament, the robot has been highly inconsistent. On the very last week it began to work better, and we have gotten it to consistently achieve missions that earned a total of over three hundred points every time. We can raise the house almost every time, and we usually get the ice core back to base as well. The turn for the floodgate is the most inconsistent, but even that works about half the time. We were also finally able to add the drilling rig and money ball missions to the programs we already had. The only mission we cannot do is gather and deliver all of the carbon balls.

We practiced the skit a few times and have all our lines memorized again, so we're pretty confident about that. We added a few lines about the Max Water Windmill to better explain how it works. The coaches asked us questions so that we could make sure we remember everything we need to remember about the research.

March 14, 2009

This is Alex. We have been working all week long on perfecting the house and ice core missions. David tried to create an arm and program that can grab the drilling rig. We did not have much success with that. The house has been getting better, then messing up, then getting better again. It's irritating. Right now, we are re-fixing it. We have had a little more luck with the ice core mission. We can consistently gather the items and deliver them to the house. We can almost always open the window, and the ice core is about 50-50. We need David's help to work on the ice core mission, and he's in Dallas for Spring Break. So, we're just working on the house mission.

On the bright side, we have gotten the levees mission working every time, and since the final mission is just point-and-shoot, we don't have to worry about that one. Now, I have to get to work.

About the two frames we made: Nic and Cheyne's does work better, but we have decided against using it to align the robot because, when it turns, the frame catches on the wall and makes it inaccurate. However, we are still using the frame because it makes the robot more secure.

March Update

This is Alex. We have done many things in the last two meetings. We have done a lot of work on the robot, trying to make it more secure and trying to prevent the wheels from splaying.

We have tried to make new arms for the missions, but we have not tested all of them out yet. David has made an arm to grab the drilling rig, but it is untested partly because we do not have a program for it. I had made an arm for the arrows, so that we could align them every time, but it is too big so I will have to rebuild it. I have been trying to come up with a way to collect the carbon and money balls, but I have not had any luck.

However, during our meeting on March 1st, we built two different frames for BURT. David, Max, and I build one and Nic and Cheyne built the other. Personally (unfortunately), I think that Nic and Cheyne's will work better, because it makes the robot more secure and it can be used to align the robot the same way every time. We have decided to set the robot in the same position at the start of every mission so that we can't argue about it being an aiming or a programming mistake anymore.

Here are Cheyne and Nic with BURT and the new frame they made. The next picture is of the frame my team made.

At the next meeting, we will test the two frames to determine which one is superior. We will also change the programs so that they will work even with the robot starting from a fixed location every time.

On Saturday, the Kwans bought biosolid fertilizer and put it in their garden and around their trees. Nic and I helped distribute the biosolid fertilizer throughout the garden. Here we are working together.

February 15th

Today we had our first meeting after our month-long break. The first thing we did was talk about the letter that Alex sent to the Water UN Limited Corporation (who made the Max Water windmill), letting them know that we would like any information about the windmilll they can release, and that we would like to help them with field testing. Nic also told us that he's working on his article for Muse and Alex has finished writing an article for the UnderAge Page, but he still needs to find some photos for it.

During the meeting Cheyne and Nic tried to use a differential with BURT; unfortunately it didn't work. Mr. Jaworski showed us how to connect it properly, but we still couldn't accomplish it. We hoped the differential would improve the frame and make the robot turn more effectively, but it only works with one motor and we need the power we get from having two motors to be successful.

Alex, David and Max built the Zippy-Bot from the new NXT book we recently acquired. It was much faster than BURT, but the motors pull and we could not connect the Ultrasonic Sensor so that it could see the wall. Therefore, we have decided not to use it. We hoped to create a different robot to see if we could learn something from that to make BURT better. We learned we like BURT's accuracy better than Zippy-Bot and we really need to focus our time and attention on BURT.

Next meeting, we are going to work on strengthening our current framework for BURT, and on making a replica. Alex is going to work on a new arm that will allow BURT to accomplish another mission.

Central Texas FLL Tournament

The state competition was very exciting. Out of sixty registered teams, fifty-six of them showed up. It was pretty nerve-wracking seeing the other teams. They were all pretty good. We saw a lot of interesting robotic ideas and designs. There were so many things that we could have done but we just didn't think of. I did get a few ideas though. We were all really proud of BURT. Although the day before the competition we had two awesome runs with BURT (305 and 310 points), at the competition, the highest score we obtained was 270 points. This was high enough for our team to win 3rd place for Robot Performance.

We did such a good job with our research presentation that we got called back to perform it again in front of more judges and some of the sponsors. Everyone seemed to think we did a great job with it. We were also called to do a teamwork interview. There was a group of judges who asked us questions about the team, and what we had done, and how we worked together. We were awarded very high marks for teamwork, research project, and robot design. Because we got such high marks, we were awarded the second place Champions Award.

We were told that we would have the chance to go to the National Tournament in Ohio, but the Saber Robotics, who got first place Champions Award, chose to go to Nationals instead of Internationals, so we can now participate in the International FLL Tournament in Atlanta, Georgia! Everyone was excited when they heard the news, and all the families are planning on going. We are coming up with several plans for fundraising already, and the team has had a short meeting to decide what we need to work on in order to win a trophy at the International Tournament.

We are going to take a well-deserved rest until the middle of February and then we'll be back at work on BURT. We want to have programs for all 18 missions (right now we have programs for 16 of them). We'll also be working on improving our research project. We know there are ways we can make our project even better! Our coaches want us to do some community service project incorporating our research solution. We're hoping the bio-solid fertilizer doesn't smell too bad!

Here we are before our first robotic head-to-head competition. That's Cheyne, me (Alex), Max (holding our banner -- thanks, Mrs. Murray!), Nic and David.

December 30

This is Alex. Like the last meeting, I took notes during this one, so I am going to copy those notes down.

We are working on adding the ice core to the collection mission. We have decided not to pick up the drilling rig because our robot is designed wrong. We have made changes to the motorized arm in order to pick up the ice core, and we are coming close to succeeding already. It is difficult, but Max is really getting into it, so I think we will be able to do it.

The robot just picked up the ice core for the first time, bit it's throwing the ice core three feet into the air, which isn't good. It is pretty hysterical though.

We have taken a short break to play some pool. Now, we are going to videotape the robot's flinging act so we can put it on youtube.

We are repeatedly gathering all the items and making it to the ice core, but we aren't always flinging it back to base.

December 28

This is Alex. During the meeting of December 28, I wrote notes throughout the meeting, talking about what we did. Therefore, I am going to copy those notes directly to this blog entry.

This is the FLL meeting of December 28. We're trying to figure out what order to run the programs in order to get maximum points.

We are going to make a modification to the arm with all the axles to make it longer in order to pick up the drilling rig.

Mrs. Kwan has counted all the possible points we can get and has come up with a total of 265 points.

We are considering changing the collection mission so that it also picks up the ice core. We're also trying to decide how to run the collection mission when the arms get in the way.

We have made more changes to the motorized arm, so it now has claws on the end of it and it can detach from the robot if it gets caught on the drilling rig.

We are now changing the arm with the hooks in order to make it lighter and more likely to succeed.

We are working on adding the drilling rig to the collection program. We're getting pretty close but the programming is difficult.

In the last run the motorized arm was at the wrong height, so it couldn't grab the drilling rig.

Those are all the notes that I took during the meeting.

The Robot

This is Alex. Ever since November 15th, we have been working on nothing but the robot (except for yesterday). We have made a lot of progress so far. We now have three whole missions perfected. We can consistently do the levees mission, the house mission and the floodgate mission. We have also come much closer to being successful with the final mission, where we deliver everything to the research area. For the most part, we've given up on raising the house and setting up the directional arrows. I haven't been working on the robot myself very much, because I've been working on the skit.

We performed the skit at the Open Minds co-op Open House. We got a lot of good feedback but we were also told how we can improve it. We also got some practice with answering questions.

We tried to upload the video of our presentation to YouTube, but it was too long, so we're going to have to edit it.

Below, see a photo of us after we performed our skit at the Open Minds Co-Op Open House.

Field Trip

This is Alex. On Friday we had our field trip to the Brazos River Authority which is where they make the biosolid fertilizer. It was a very interesting tour and we learned a lot of things about biosolids that we would never have found out before. For example, 100% of Belton's waste goes to the factory, and 66% of Temple's waste goes there. All that stuff smelled absolutely toxic. We also learned exactly how the biosolids are processed. It is a long and complicated process and I am quite glad that my mother was paying such strict attention.

They have to take the water and filter out all the large bits of junk.















Then, they completely remove all the water to turn it into sludge cakes (which smell worse than they did before). After that's done, they put it through another machine to make sure it's composed of exactly the right minerals and microscopic organisms, and then they pile it up so big that it combusts itself like a compost heap.















Believe me, it's more complicated than that, but we're going to go over it in more detail on Sunday. We are also, hopefully, going to get some more work done on the arrows and floodgate mission. I think we need to use the ultrasonic sensor to see when we're the right distance from the far wall before stopping and turning. If we can get the distance down straight, I'm pretty sure it'll make it a lot more consistent. So, that'll be one of our main objectives. That's all for now. bye.

November 2nd, 6th and 9th

This is David and Alex. On the second of November, we worked on nothing but the robot. We worked on the house mission, and got it to the point where we can almost always gather all of the items. We tried to get the light sensor to work, but it was very difficult and we did not choose a very good line follower program.














That was pretty much all that we did on the second, but in between the second and the sixth, we found a new line follower program. On the sixth, we worked on the house mission again. We still couldn't get the light sensor to work so, we found yet another line follower program.















On the ninth, we tried the new program. It worked much better at the beginning, but then we decided to revise our plan and not raise the house or open the window. Now, we have decided to work on the directional arrows and the floodgate. We have a very good idea for how to set up the arrows. It's also very simple, but the only problem is that it takes up a lot of memory on the NXT. It shouldn't be that big a problem, but it could be. In any case, we'll do it and see where it gets us. While we worked on programming, Nic and Cheyne built a duplicate robot. They decided that the best way to differentiate between the robots was to make the second one as luridly colored as possible. So, all the arms are yellow, green, red, or other unconventional colors. And, they're not put on in any kind of pattern or style. So, we know which is which.














We also did a teamwork challenge, where we had to make two pillars to hold a yardstick up over a box, and then build a cradle for a pool ball to stand on top of the stick. It was difficult, but we got it all done in time.














That's all that we did for those last three meetings.

October 26th and 30th

This is Max. On Sunday the 26th we discussed what we learned at the Maker Faire. Our skit wasn't precise enough so we started rewriting it. We made our skit to be a combination of Risk and Star Wars. Cheyne and Nic are still going to be the bad guys, but our good guys changed. I am not going to be the Limer. I'm going to be a good guy who builds dams and irrigation systems, but we haven't come up with a cool name yet. David is going to be a Chinese super hero and I get to be his translator. Alex is going to be a scientist.

We worked a lot on the house missions and finally successfully gathered the computer, bike and insulation and delivered it to the green grid.

On Thursday we worked on the skit some more and are almost done with it. We built an arm for the house mission, but it's not heavy enough to raise the house. We added some weighted bricks, but are having trouble with the arm working and not breaking.

We practiced the skit twice and did more rewriting so that now at the end we talk about our climate problem, our sister community and our solutions. Nic and Cheyne are also going to talk about our field trips and the way we shared our project with others.

October 19th & 23rd

This is Alex and David. On Sunday the 19th, the team, except Max, went to the Maker Faire to perform and share the research we have done. We performed the skit four times, the last time was for the engineer, who couldn't find us in time for the earlier three presentations. She gave us feedback on the skit and the research board that we had created. She said that we needed to do a better job presenting what we had found about Argentina and its climate problems and solutions. Apparently, we needed to put that kind of information in our skit.

On October 23rd (today), we had another meeting. We went over what we had been told by the engineer. We decided to completely rewite the skit. We are considering having a Risk board (huge wall map) where Nic and Cheyne put rain cloud and sun stickers on the places that they have destroyed with their powers. Then we can have our heroes put their stickers on the map, too.

After that, while we started writing this blog, the other three worked on the levee mission. They figured out a way to deliver the people along with the levees and it worked four times and it was perfect (it works best with the people in front of the levees). They are going to work on being able to deliver the cage to the research center. Then, we were told what they did so that we could write it down like we just did.

October 16th and 17th

This is Alex. On Friday, we had an extra meeting to work on our research board. We began by choosing the layout for the board. There were many ideas and many changes of ideas, but we ended up with the climate problems of Central Texas and Rosario, Argentina on the left side of the board. We have the current solutions on the far right side, and the team's solution in the middle part.

Alex, Cheyne, David, and Nic working on the research board.

On Thursday, we worked on our skit. The skit is going very well indeed. Almost everyone has their lines memorized, and those who don't are confident that they can get their lines memorized by Sunday. We practiced the choreography for the light saber fights, and we have them down really well.

Nic laying on the ground after being beaten in a light saber fight.


Alex and Cheyne fighting as the Gelly and Lord Flood.



Nic showing nothing but a smile, and Cheyne trying not to smile.

On the 19th, the team will go to the Maker Faire in Austin, where we will perform the skit and present our research to a group of scientists. An engineer from UT will evaluate us and give us feedback on our presentation.

October 9th & 12th

This is Alex. On October 9th, we met and went over our homework from the last meeting, so we had to pick one of the three communities that Nic had found that were similar to Central Texas as far as climate is concerned. We decided that Rosario, Argentina was the most similar to Central Texas, since they have to deal with the same problems that we do. We also had David write a thank you note to Farmer Grandy. Most of the meeting was taken up by the research project, but we spent a little bit of time at the end working on the house mission. We now have the ultrasonic sensor mounted securely, but we're changing the program so that the mission runs more smoothly. At the end of the meeting, we decided on homework for Sunday. I had to write the basic outline for the script, and the other team members had to find what solutions were being used for drought and excessive rain in Rosario.

On October 12th, we had another meeting. We went over the homework and talked about a substance that worked just like the biosolid fertilizer, but it was a kind of gel. The entire name is gel-tech root gel.

We also went over the skit that I had come up with. We still have to come up with each person's dialogue, and since no one was very eager to do that on Sunday, we're going to come up with the dialogue on Thursday instead.

We also had a teamwork project. We had a pool ball, and in front of it was a small cardboard wall with a hole cut in it. We had to build and test an arm that we could operate to reach through the hole and pull the pool ball back through. We came up with an arm that was like a pair of scissors, but with claws at the ends instead of blades.

The last thing that we did was work on the house mission. We're getting close to finishing it, but it's difficult having to fine-tune the programming.

That's pretty much all that we did.

October 5th

Hello, this is Alex and Nic, but mostly Nic. We started today off by writing the blog for the field trip. After that we decided on our theme for the research project, extreme weather due to climate. We also assigned specific roles for the research project. We then did a practice teamwork challenge. We had to build a tower nine inches high to support a pool ball and move the ball six inches sideways.

Alex, David, and Nic, getting ready to build the tower.

We didn't finish making it in time, and then Alex's father showed us a better way to do it. The team tried to design a long platform nine inches tall and six inches long with a gear train to ferry the pool ball across the gap. We should have built a ground level gear rack with a 9" tall tower.

David, Nic, and Max looking at the tower that Mr. Jaworski built.

Oh well. We continued work on the house but eventually decided that the light sensor was a bad idea. Later people.

October 3rd

We went to the farm and met Mr. Grady.

He was a very nice man, and told us all about the experiments on the farm, and what they were doing with biosolid fertilizer (A.K.A. human waste).

He answered all of our questions about climate and we got a lot of useful information.

He drove us out to one of the fields with biosolid fertilizer in it.

Despite what you might think, it only smelled a tiny bit bad when we were stepping in it. They had sprayed lime on it so it didn't smell so bad. The useful information about the climate includes the following facts: when there are periods of excessive rain or drought, the crops do not grow as well. Extra rain is good for the hay, to a point. After that point, the plants become less healthy because there is too much water for them to absorb, and it drowns them, in a way. When there is a long period of drought, the farmers simply have to buy extra water for the crops. The biosolid fertilizer also helps during drought because it absorbs more water than the natural soil, meaning the hay has better access to water.

October 2nd

This is David and I'm reporting about what we did. First, we talked about what questions we would ask the farmer at the field trip on Friday. We each came up with two questions to ask him each. We then began to work on the house missions. We came up with lots of ideas, and we can now gather the bicycle, insulation, and computer, but we still haven't gotten them to the house itself. Nic made an attachment to the robot that will enable us to deliver the cage to the research center. I wrote a thank you note to Dr. Polley, thanking him for all that he had done for us. Nic also came up with an arm that will allow us to open the window of the house, and turn off the lights. That's all for now.

September 28th

This is Max. We started today by working on the blog as a team.

Then we started the Teamwork Challenge we do every week.

Today we had to create a device which had 2 axles and a crank and when you turned the crank twice, it turned the other axle once. We used gears, a crank and chainlink to achieve our goal. We were able to create our device and take it apart in about 8 minutes overall.



The final activity for today was for the team to work on a mission for the research center however, we ran into a problem. Our touch sensor on our robot fell apart and when we put it back together again, it wasn't quite where it was before so it touched the wall at the wrong time and messed up the ice buoy part of the mission. We had to spend time recreating our touch sensor and now it looks a little different (simplifying it so if part of it comes off, the rest of the robot is intact) and we tested it twice -- and we had 50% success.

Alex and David worked on updating our worksheets to reflect what we've tried to do with our robot and the levee missions so far.

September 26th

This is the team. On Friday we went on a field trip to the Blackland
Research Center.

We met Dr. Polley and he took us out to the research area and showed us the biodomes in which they were growing plants in different carbon dioxide and soil conditions. There were three types of soil: A sandy type from Bastrop, a condensed clay type from Houston, and a plain clay type from Austin.


There are two rows of biospheres. One row has carbon dioxide concentrations from 200 years ago to the present. The other has current carbon dioxide levels up to what scientists predict the carbon dioxide levels will be 50 years in the future.

Dr. Polley also showed us some of the equipment that he was using for the research.

Several of the meters recorded the temperature of the various biodomes. When the temperature passed a certain level, it would squirt chilled water through the bottom of the biodomes to prevent the plants from overheating.

We asked him several highly intelligent questions about carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and how it relates to the climate and plant growth. We took notes on the answers to our questions.