Team Meeting 4

With Claire and Tom Horncastle.

We have to make a robot able to square itself on a wall - it can do this if it is built solid enough.
Following along wall - note wheels on side of robot so it rolls smoothly.
No wheels needed on back of robot - just stabilizers.
The teams are building the robot on cover of one of our books.
There are all kind of program that you put on the robot.
You can put as many attachments on at the start of FLL as you can.You can take thing off if you are in base.take off as you work through the challenges and you don't need them any more.

Need someone in the team to be responsible for tyre-checking because they come loose.

Line following example shown with one of Claire's robots - it had too much side to side zig zag and too fast.

Using one light sensor - going slower but more carefully - smoother, less zigzag. Better.

Watch wheel friction, Robot might slip on different papers/boards.
Important to have robot able to recognize colour Green.
Robocup - green is always on left - turn 90 degrees left.
Robot follows edge of line, not the line itself. Follow left side of any line.

Small wheel on back of our robot - you never know which way it's going to go - but great for Robocup line following - really good for going forwards, not good if you need your robot to go backwards.

Tom's advice - friction is your worst enemy. Wheel type you choose can overcome this. Watch different friction on different mats.
Advantage of big wheels - can go faster, it goes further in one rotation - put a red mark on the wheel to see what one motor rotation distance is. The motor is what determines what the axel turn will be.
A rotation is NOT a turn of a wheel, it is a turn of the motor.
Disadvantage of bigger wheels - narrow ones can zig zag too much -
Smaller wheels are not so fast
Balloon wheels wobble more, not so flat. Flat surface wheel good.

This year's FLL mat will be a fold-up mat with lots of pieces on it.
Colour sensor needs to be fitted in front of the wheels!
Keep light sensor really low so it doesn't pick up outside light or its own shadow.

Always use a stop block to finish - great to use when testing programmes. Is different than a wait block. It's in the common pallette.
Always use B and C motors for moving the robot - use A for attachments. B and C are the default for motors, so use these defaults and that's one less thing to think about. Keep all sensors in their default ports too. We need to check what these are.
Light sensor goes to port 3.

Switch - positive top, negative bottom.

A single light sensor is enough for line following.
Line following - make go forever, not 1 rotation.

Students welcome to email Claire and attach programs for checking.

By Caitlyn and Carol

2009 NZ Champion FLL Robot

2009 NZ Champion Robot

The robot that a lot of US teams are apparently making - we have the book to create this from.
Check out how it is designed, and where the sensores are. Touch sensors at each end, too.

No wheels on the back.

Trying out the line following and detecting green on the Test Mat.

Lucky to have lots of robots to test the programmes on.

Claire and Tom helping us out and guiding the programming by asking questions.