ROBOTMAK3RS Blog

Austrian MCP Mike Brandl has published a travelogue of his six days sojourn at the FLL world finals in Atlanta in mid of April. Have a look at his site where you will find a lot of interesting photos and videos. Besides, it's a good opportunity to see how some of the people that are posting here actually lool like... ;) 

Hi, My name is Marc-André Bazergui, bazmati or bazmarc on social media. Jim asked me to join The NXT Step as a contributor, It is a challenge I must accept and hope to bring information you will enjoy.  But first let me introduce myself. I'm a 42yo A dult F an O f L EGO Mindstorms , French Canadian living in Montreal, Quebec. It all started when the RCX took me out of my dark age. I have to admit I got charmed on the idea of mixing my newly found passion (computer) with an old one i had as a kid (LEGO). The Internet showed me i was not alone and provided me with answers idea and... new LEGO friends worldwide. I got my first NXT when it came out in 2006 and soon after joined QUELUG.org.  Back then we were 6 members, with only one other owning an NXT. Today the Quebec LEGO User Group counts over 40 active members many of those now have an interest in Mindstorms Today  I take part in many organizations involved in bringing NXT into schools. go check them out, the...

Here are the first pictures form the FLL World festival in Atlanta. FLL Opening Ceremony, with ice. LEGO show and help point. Interview on the Moon, with Steven C. for Moonbots.org Jay's Raching Machine SUMO BOTs, from Bryan Bonahoom (sorry about misidentifying them previously) Wall-E Bryan, Chris, Steve, and Mantis, in real and on the NXT Box. Flow chart of the AI program. 13 year old wrote a AI program in NXT-G. please feel free to stop by and talk with us. Martyn

I'm waiting on some videos to post more about the FTC World Championships and our robot, but in the meantime you can see a video our team put together of our experience at the competition here . I also thought I'd post a description of this year's game so that readers can understand what's going on in the videos. You can click here to see an animation from FIRST that explains how the game works. At a tournament, teams first participate in several qualifying matches . During each qualifying match, two randomly selected teams ally with each other against two other randomly selected teams. The two winning teams gain 2 q ualifying points , while the two losing teams don't gain any. After the qualifying rounds, the team with the most qualifying points is ranked #1, and so on. But what happens if multiple teams have the same number of qualifying points? In this case, a somewhat-confusing tiebreaker is used. After each qualifying match, the four participating teams recie...

I spoke this morning with someone at the World Congress Center who told me that FIRST is still scheduled and will happen. The issue right now is logistics and holding everything (competition, pits, display areas, etc.) and where... I'm expecting a call today or tomorrow from someone who hopefully will provide more information on locations of the events. The good news, of course, is that FLL is still on and I'm sure they'll get all this figured out before April 17... see you then!