Here's a new paper I just wrote!
First Lego League 2013
First Lego League is a League where teams get together to program Lego Mindstorms to do different missions on a board, learn about Core Values, and learn about the theme project of the year. The official website is: http://www.firstlegoleague.org/
The team I was on this year was one of the Goffstown’s teams, The NXT Ninjas. (NXT is one of the generations of Mindstorms.) We met for 4 hours every Sunday, and on the last couple of Sundays, we met for 6 hours. For the entire last week, we met 3 hours almost every day until Saturday, which was when competition was held. During the meetings, we would program the NXTs to do certain tasks on the game board, which looked like the picture to the right. We also would turn in the homework that we had been assigned.
This year’s motif was “Natures Fury”. We learned all about natural disasters. Part of what we did for homework was writing a couple of papers about the natural disaster we chose- earthquakes.
There always has been a competition at the end of the year. That competition happened to be last Saturday. There were 16 teams this year (including us). We were judged on the robot performance, core values, technical judging, and the presentation we created and gave.
Robot performance was basically how our NXT performed on the b oard. We scored 165 points for that, putting us in 9th place. The highest score was 432.
Core values was when our team’s teamwork was put to the test. They told us that we needed to get 5 ping-pong balls into a square on the floor, marked with blue masking tape, without any of us passing a line - about 3 feet away. They said we had 5 minutes, some tape, and some newspaper. The clock started. We taped rolls of newspaper to each other and the ping-pong balls to another piece, and slid the newspaper with the balls on it into the square. We made it just in time!
Technical judging was where a couple of judges came over to a practice board, and we showed them how our robot worked. One of the judges pulled me and one of my friends over to see if we knew how to program an NXT. This was the most simple part of the competition.
Then came presentation time. We had prepared a presentation about a device that could help find people under rubble faster. Back when we were learning it, I wrote the base of the script, and then as a team, we added to it. It took a little while learning it, but after a while we got the hang of it.
We didn’t end up getting to go to States, (But the team in 10th place did! A little devastating!) but I had a great time anyway. I really enjoyed this year of Lego League! Maybe you can find a team near you!
