ROBOTMAK3RS Blog

Steve Hassenplug completes 6 missions in one run in less than 4 seconds... especially watch the flying Wave Turbine. The run is great and awesomely planned. Richard

Today, I ran across four (German-speaking) blogs in the web where FIRST LEGO League teams regularly blog on their experiences and progress in respect to the upcoming FLL " Power Puzzle " competition. Do you know of other FLL-related blogs out there? Addendum: There has been a similar posting on THE NXT STEP in May (with some links in comments), but that was for the "Nano Quest" then. There might be additional ones now (for instance, in Germany the attendance marked a new record on the number of participating teams for the actual FLL competition - no less than 101 up to 460!).

I recently attended a Robotics Workshop put on by Maine Robotics . The course was paid for via some grants that Maine Robotics has secured, so there were no entry fees. Maine Robotics is a non-profit organization run by Tom Bickford that helps promotes robotics in the state of Maine. They coordinate and run the FLL Competitions (in December for us here in Maine). The workshop was pretty good. It gave some examples of the differences between the RCX and the NXT. Tom also gave an overview of the Robolab software (for the RCX) and the NXT-G language. Seeing 20 or so RCX kits, and 10 NXT kits (plus all the related parts) sitting on one table was a sight to behold. It was like… nirvana… But hey, I digress. One of my favorite parts, was the overview of the Power Puzzle challenge. I am not coaching a competing team this year, so this was the first time I got to see the playing field up close. After seeing the challenges, and discussing them with a bunch of adults...

The new challenges for the FLL Power Puzzle season are pretty interesting, and include some new twists to the competition. They also seem to make it somewhat harder to get a perfect score. For example, while the Nanoquest theme had only 9 challenges, this season has a whopping 15! Here are some comments on a few of the complicated challenges: Hydro-Dam: This challenge model is a deliverable, meaning it's in base (or the parking lot) until the robot moves it. The "water" part of the dam is not used until the end of the round, when it's used for scoring. For the challenge, the robot has to move the dam so that it touches both banks of one of the two rivers on the east (right) side of base. There is another factor, though. In a later challenge, the Power Lines have to be moved so that they connect the Power Plant property to surrounding communities. If the hydro dam is touching a community which is touching the Power Lines, you get an extra 5 points. Wind Turbines: These...

Today is the day! On FLL's USA website , they have a news bulletin announcing that today at 12:00 (EDT), they will be releasing the 2007 Power Puzzle challenges. From their website: Challenge Kickoff - Join us here on September 5th at Noon (EDT) for the unveiling of the Challenge. Please note: once the Challenge is launched, it will be available for you to revisit at anytime. -Jonathan UPDATE: The challenge kickoff has been released, and is available here . UPDATE 2: Shortcut to the Q&A for official responses to questions here .