Subject:
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Lego League Story...
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.org.ca.rtltoronto
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Date:
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Thu, 21 Nov 2002 17:58:08 GMT
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Viewed:
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473 times
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I have to tell a happy story.
I coach a First Lego League team. Actually, we have one team that works together sharing ideas and building two robots.
If you don't know about the FLL, check this out: http://www.legoleague.org/ The goal is to build a robot to accomplish several pre-defined tasks. Like clearing rocks off a soccer field, or delivering materials to the building site.
Well, we had one robot entered in a local tournament (all our ideas THROWN together, much like the week before rtlXX), and at the last minute, we decided to enter a second one. I helped the kids build a "robot" with one motor, no sensors, and a big front bumper. The drive wheels were on a single axle, so the robot would go straight pretty well, but had a hard time turning. Ok, so there was no way it could turn! Heck, it took less time to build than one of Chris' robots.
So, we showed up at the tournament with one robot that had an arm for lifting, a scoop for carring, differential drive tracks, and a ton of complex programming. And the second K.I.S.S. robot that the kids nicknamed "Senseless".
Because this tournament was pretty early in the season, most of the teams were struggling with their robots. Few worked as planned. Including our primary robot. But Senseless worked exactly like we planned. Forward/Backward... push the rocks, return to base. Push the materials, return to base...
When the plastic dust settled, our primary robot finished sixth, while Senseless took second. Not bad for a two day old robot that couldn't event turn.
It was an EXCELLENT demonstration of the KISS method. And the kids could see it in action. I just hope they understand what it means...
Steve
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: Lego League Story...
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| (...) Neat story! KISS indeed. Is there any way that you could see if your posting mechanism might do some wrapping? Each of your paragraphs in the web view ends up being one line long. Between that and the thread breaking that seems to happen when (...) (22 years ago, 21-Nov-02, to lugnet.org.ca.rtltoronto)
| | | Re: Lego League Story...
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| (...) I quote Mr. Scott on this one... "The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain!" When Guelph had its first sumo match, the rules were the 'bot had to fit within 1 cubic foot. So I show up with an RCX, and 1 cubic (...) (22 years ago, 21-Nov-02, to lugnet.org.ca.rtltoronto)
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