Team Reflection

Due to the fact that we have been doing many group projects in this class throughout the year, we have become very familiar with working in groups, trusting our peers and taking on responsibility. Because of this we believe that the Lego group projects were very successful in terms of teamwork. We were more comfortable with each other and were able to openly share our opinions and consider the suggestions of others. We have come to the conclusion that working with people you are comfortable with will lead to the most favorable outcomes and hopefully very good results.
Like in every team there are also conflicts and problems. Even though we felt that our team did not experience any extreme problems, there were still a couple things that we would have done differently. For example, we would have made sure that everyone attends all the meetings and is informed about what is going on in the group. At times we felt that one person was not participating in the activities enough and was getting graded the same that the other group members were and that was not fair. But we learned that when this happens we need to confront the person we are concerned about and give them a chance to fix their mistakes. Another thing that did not go very well in our group is not having proper access to the needed materials such as the Lego programmer. We were unable to download the program to our computers and therefore did not have access to it outside of class. In the end downloaded it onto a friend’s computer and were able to use it from there, but this meant that we did not work in class much because we did not have access to that computer. Next time we will be more organized.
Overall we feel that our group was very successful in completing and succeeding in the challenges and we worked very well together!

Catapult and Ball Challenge

Design Problem- For this assignment we are required to design, build and program a robot that catapults a ball as far away as possible and then finds the ball and stops when it touches it.

Solution- After trying numerous different methods to complete the assigned task Team Lego was left with only one choice...Blue-tooth! We discovered a very helpful program on the Lego program that allows us to control our robot using the arrows on the laptop! We were so excited to find this tool because using the ultrasonic sensor was not going as smoothly as we hoped.  So we decided to use this program instead of using the sensor.

Experience- Today we actually challenged our robots for the last time! Team Lego was the first group to attempt the challenge, and when we challenged we were very happy to know that our ball was catapulted the furthest. The speed of our robot, on the other hand, was the slowest.  But we were somewhat satisfied to know that since our ball went the furthest the speed will not really affect our score as much as if the ball had not gone a far distance. Also today we said goodbye to our Pablo and put him back into the box...wishing him good luck for next year! 

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Catapult and Ball Hunting 2

Design Problem- For this assignment we are required to design, build and program a robot that catapults a ball as far away as possible and then finds the ball and stops when it touches it.

Solution- After playing around with the Lego program and our robot, we were able to create a program that will catapult the ball but we do not yet know how to program it to look for the ball and follow it.  The only thing we know is that we need to use the ultrasonic sensor. Because most other groups have been having the same problem, an idea of using a remote control has been proposed. Thanks to the advanced technology we are able to download an application onto a call phone and use it to control the robot.  We can make it move forward, backwards, right and left. This technique seems much simpler than programing it. 

Experience- After working for a couple hours on trying to program the robot to complete the given task we were only able to create a catapult but not find the ball. When we came into mentor session today we were surprised to see other groups using their cell phones to control the robot. We thought this was a much more efficient method and are currently working on downloading the same application for our robot! 
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Catapult and Ball Hunting

Design Problem- For this assignment we are required to design, build and program a robot that catapults a ball as far away as possible and then finds the ball and stops when it touches it.

Solution- Starting out with this project we had a couple of ideas to test.  First of all we decided that the catapult that we are going to build should be long rather than short because a longer catapult will throw the ball farther. We will attach the catapult to a third motor that will throw the catapult forward thus tossing the ball. Also we are going to use the ultrasonic sensor to search for the ball and move towards it.  Due to the fact that we are not very familiar with the Lego Mindstorm program, we are not yet sure exactly how to program the robot to accomplish this task. But we are determined to create a robot that will bet all the others!

Experience- Today was a rather disappointing day for TeamLego.  Our robot came in last place in the last challenge because it did not at all follow the line.  We were disappointed with our results because when we tested the robot at home it worked perfectly but when it came to the real deal it did not preform at the level we were hoping for. Also today we started working on the catapult assignment.

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Line-with-Gaps Challenge

Design Problem- In this assignment we were required to design, program and build a robot that is capable of following a black line that had white gaps along the way using a light sensor.

Solution- Throughout the whole day Team Lego has been trying out different ideas to see which, if any, works best.  Our first thought was to simply time the robot to follow a black line for a certain amount of time and then a white line for a certain time period.  We discovered that this was an insufficient strategy because when following the "white line" the robot got confused because the whole board was white. We then tried to use two different sensors and have them take turns controlling the motors so that when one sensor is on the white the other would be detecting the black thus moving the robot along the line.  This strategy was too complicated for our limited programming capabilities so we are currently working on something different.

Experience- Today was yet again another stressful day because we had to try so many different ideas and none of them seemed to work the way we hoped.  Nevertheless we have made progress by knowing what DOES NOT work, now we have a clearer idea of what to do.  Also today we received our results for the last challenge, the line following, and as you can see we were ranked in 2 place, check it out!

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Follow a simple line

Design Problem- In this assignment we had to create a robot that follow a simple curved line by programing it to follow a black line using a light sensor and it had to stop at the red square after two rounds.

Solution-Our main focus was to make the robot move by following the black line. So we had to program it in a way the robot would distinguish between the dark color (black) and the lighter color (white). We tried to figure out how to make the robot stop at the red square, but it was very difficult to program it, even thought we watch a lot of related video trials.

Experience- I think this assignment was more frustrating experience because it require more programing and focusing to creat a robot that accomplish the right challenge. At the begining we struggled on building the robot even though we were following the instructions in the packet. The most challenging part turned out is the programing because we could not figure out how to make it stop at the red stop. 

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Tug-of-War Competition

Design Problem- For this assignment we are required to design, program and create a robot that will be able to participate in a tug-or-war challenge with another robot.  Using specific computer programs, we need to program the robot to turn on upon sensing a loud noise (e.g. a clap) and activate the motors that we use.  The design that we choose to create must be one that will suffice in overpowering the other robot.

Solution- We decided to program the robot so that it will move the three motors in the reverse direction thus pulling away from the competing robot. Our design method consisted of a four wheel base, strongly held together by various parts, and a heavy top that will add to the weight of the robot and make it harder for the other robot to pull.

Experience- After all the hard work we put into our robot, we were pretty satisfied with the results we obtained from the competitions.  In the first two rounds we competed and against the Build-a-Bears and Mark and the Powell Kids and won both races.  The third competition we had was against Team J3T2 and we ended up losing that competition, but overall we got a 94% which is great!

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Tug-of-War Competition

Design Problem- For this assignment we are required to design, program and create a robot that will be able to participate in a tug-or-war challenge with another robot.  Using specific computer programs, we need to program the robot to turn on upon sensing a loud noise (e.g. a clap) and activate the motors that we use.  The design that we choose to create must be one that will suffice in overpowering the other robot.

Solution- We decided to program the robot so that it will move the three motors in the reverse direction thus pulling away from the competing robot. Our design method consisted of a four wheel base, strongly held together by various parts, and a heavy top that will add to the weight of the robot and make it harder for the other robot to pull.  

Experience- Today we had a rather frustrating experience because we had to design, create and redesign the robot numerous time in order to reach the desired results.  In the beginning we thought that programming the robot would be the difficult part but discovered that actually constructing it was the more challenging part because all the pieces had to fit together in order for the robot to move and look like what we were aiming towards.  But in the end we were very pleased with the way our robot turned out. 

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Rubber Band Car

 

Challenge: To design and build a car that is powered using a robber band.

Experience: Through this experiment we were able to observe the ideas of other groups to help improve our own design and also learn from our own mistakes and correct them through multiple trials. Since this was our first challenge, we discovered the strengths and weaknesses of each team member and assigned tasks based on that.

Solution: To complete this challenge we tried multiple designs in order to find the best one. According to our observations, we discovered that using larger wheels and longer Lego pieces gave us the most desirable results. By the last trial our group came in third place!

Below are some of the pictures of our different designs.