Robotics competition

I guess I should give a little info on the competition.

The teams start with a lego kit, that has wheels and wires, sensors, the usb cord, a central computer system, the mat and all the things needed to program and build a robot that will complete as many tasks as possible within a two minute time range.

The theme this year was alternative energy sources, so every task has something to do with that. The robot is programed to go out from the home base and complete a task. Taylers team sent it out to do one or two tasks at a time and then come back to base, some teams completed two or three tasks at a time and then came back, each team can decide what they want to do. Each time the robot does not make it back to base, and they have to pick it up they lose points.

The robot goes out and hopefully gets a task done and comes back, Tayler's group pushed the windmills over a line, tripped a switch that sent a coal car down a track, pushed a dam into place, pushed a car to a house, picked up some uranium and corn, hit a switch that activates a solar panel, after they collected the corn and uranium and power poles they have to have the robot take them to different areas on the mat. This isn't the order they did it in, I am just trying to remember them, and I am not sure which ones I am forgetting. They have ten tasks to complete in a two minute time frame. The robot has to leave the base and make it back to the base to get the points, so they try to get as many points as they can.

In addition to all of the programming and stuff they had to do an energy audit of a local business, and then present to that business all of the ways they could conserve energy by using alternative energy sources. What the cost and savings would be and how long it would take to pay off the improvements. They went to our local swimming pool and filmed the video and then the day of competition they showed the video to some judges.

The team gets judged on how well they work as a team, how well a robot is built, how well it performs, they judge on if they think the kids built and programmed mostly by themselves, and lots of areas, so it is a full day

They also did a alternative energy fair at their school, all of the kids researched a different energy source and made a display.

And just recently they went to our City council meeting to present their ideas of how they could save money using alternative energy sources.

I am sure I am forgetting something, but in a nut shell that is what they did, it only took them every single friday and saturday evening since August to do all of this and I am sure Uncle Sid put in more hours than that. It is amazing to see, and I only have a small idea of all that they did. It's a lot of work but Tayler just loves it.