NJ State FLL Tournament

Built On The Rock attended the New Jersey State Championship tournament on Saturday. It was an exciting event, with several teams scoring very well in the robot performance rounds. Built On The Rock achieved 1st Place Robot Performance with a perfect 400, and the Landroids, a first-year team, came close behind with a 395. The Landroids also won the Champion's award, which means they'll be going to the World Festival later this year - an amazing achievement for a new team! Built On The Rock could have gotten all perfect scores, but an unsecured mission model prevented them in the second round, and they didn't have enough time to finish the last mission in the third round because the match was started without much warning, which caused them to start several seconds late.

I noticed that teams scored significantly higher than last year, on average. Last year, the second highest score was a 298. This year, however, eleven teams got a 300 or higher! I've also heard of other states doing significanly better this year. It seems that, although the missions were intended to be harder, they've turned out to be easier. We'll probably be seeing quite a few perfect scores at the World Festival this year.

The other thing I noticed at the tournament is that the increased number of rules and complications seemed to be causing trouble with scoring. In our first round (when they got a perfect score), the referee scored at least half of the missions incorrectly!

You can read more about the tournament and see pictures and videos at http://www.teambuiltontherock.org/

-Jonathan

Celebrating MINDSTORMS with a Remix - Part 3

The ROBOTMAK3RS continued their celebration of the 25th Anniversary of MINDSTORMS through these Fall and Winter remix projects. Each ROBOTMAK3R was tasked with selecting one LEGO set of their choice and combining it with a MINDSTORMS set. Below are the five amazing models they came up with. Braill3 by Jerry Nicholls Braill3 is an EV3-based LEGO Braille bricks reader. This robot uses its fingertip, made from three touch switches, to read messages written using the LEGO Braille bricks and will speak out what it detected. If it sees a simple maths problem it will attempt to solve it and give the answer as well. To learn more about the process of creating this machine, read Jerry's blog . Braill3 can be viewed here . Set Review: The Braille Bricks set is well thought out. The ratios of the letters is suitable for general use and the addition of some punctuation and arithmetic operators is excellent. There is a card showing what bricks there are and their quantities, but no form of sort...

Celebrating MINDSTORMS with a Remix - Part 2

The ROBOTMAK3RS continued their celebration of the 25th Anniversary of MINDSTORMS through these summer and fall remix projects. Each ROBOTMAK3R was tasked with selecting one LEGO set of their choice and combining it with a MINDSTORMS set. Below are the five amazing models they came up with. Remote controlled material handle r by Jozua van Ravenhorst (aka Mr Jo) This remix combines the LEGO Technic Material Handler (42144) with MINDSTORMS EV3 (31313) It uses the power of pneumatic cylinders to move objects around. By using a bluetooth remote control, very precise movements can be made with this model. Touch sensors in the base chassis prevent the turret twisting the cables that go through the turntable to much. The program has several protections to prevent over pressurizing the system for each of the 3 individual pumps and valves that control the 2 booms and claws. The real version of this machine is mostly used in waste material sites to bring the material to machines that sort and...

Celebrating 25 Years of MINDSTORMS

In celebration of the 25th Anniversary of MINDSTORMS, we take a trip through history. Please also visit ROBOTMAK3RS Community every week as we highlight different projects all through 2023 in celebration of the anniversary. Some of the early history is based on the content shared by Coder Shah in our MINDSTORMS EV3 Community Group . Some of the text and links may have been edited from his original posts for consistency and clarity. 1984 - Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen watched a TV program called "Talking Turtle," where MIT professor Seymour Papert demonstrated how children could control robot "turtles" using LOGO, a programming language he developed. 1988 - The collaboration between MIT and LEGO resulted in LEGO TC Logo in 1988, which allowed students to control LEGO models using computer commands. The video shows Papert demonstrating TC Logo. 1990 - LEGO TC Logo was hampered since the robots you built had to be tethered to a personal computer. LEGO and MIT...

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