A Math Problem

Hi Nanites,

Thinking about sharpening your math skills? Try this:

http://mathcounts.org/NETCOMMUNITY/Page.aspx?pid=355&srcid=1336

-Kingsum

Judging Rubrics...

FIRST has a new look.

http://www.firstlegoleague.org/community/uploadedFiles/FLL%20handbook%20web%20sz%2008.pdf

read pages 90-96, focus on the right most column.

For the 7th graders on the team, please reflect on what you think and share your thoughts when we meet today.

BTW, if you want to print them out, a high quality version is supposed to be available on http://www.firstlegoleague.org/community/uploadedFiles/FLL%2008%20cover+pages%20print%20quality.pdf - but it seems broken. So please stay with the first link I gave you for the time being.

-Kingsum

Climate Connection: Quiz 5

Has our climate changed? How do scientists determine that?

Please click on the link "http://legonanites.blogspot.com/ " and respond with your answer by entering it as comment. You need to respond to each quiz before our next meeting.

Please note everyone on the Internet can see your answer.

Climate Connection: Quiz 4: Dry & Wet

What is the driest region on earth? Why is it so dry?
What is the wettest region on earth? Why is it so wet?

Please click on the link "http://legonanites.blogspot.com/ " and respond with your answer by entering it as comment. You need to respond to each quiz before our next meeting.

Please note everyone on the Internet can see your answer.

Climate Connection: Quiz 3

Quiz #3 - What are the characteristics of waves? Do you think heat is wave(s)?

 

Please click on the link "http://legonanites.blogspot.com/ " and respond with your answer by entering it as comment. You need to respond to each quiz before our next meeting.

Please note everyone on the Internet can see your answer.

-Kingsum

Climate Connection: Quiz #2

Now that Danny has responded to Quiz #1, the rest of you should hurry up.

Quiz #2 - What is light? What is heat? How are they related?

Please click on the link "http://legonanites.blogspot.com/ " and respond with your answer by entering it as comment.

Please note everyone on the Internet can see your answer.

-Kingsum

Climate Connection: Quiz #1

Hi Nanites, To encourage you to think deeper in the research and robotics, I will be giving you a few quizzes during summer. Here is Quiz #1.

Quiz #1: What are the major characteristics of weather? Please list all of them you know.

Please click on the link "Lego Nanites" and respond with your answer by entering it as comment.

Please note everyone on the Internet can see your answer.

Thanks, Kingsum

Here is a picture of the mat

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_TnqLjPgGhc8jIUVjwEKje81e0Segi4NOxImGkVfPt38i6BVDb7NPndcThi68pvdl7qxtfGizJNucUwjHTJYHom0VsswRzoLklsbRf8lFxKumqh_XnPvF4eNchhG31eERfOXUT4cHoI80/s1600-h/ClimateConnections2Field11x17.jpg

That should help you remember your missions :-)

Perhaps you want to build a robot like this?

http://www.bostondynamics.com/content/sec.php?section=BigDog

Next Meeting is Sunday, Aug 3, 4:30pm-6:30pm

Hi Nanites,

Just a friendly reminder that our next meeting is Aug 3, 4:30pm.

WHAT YOU NEED TO DO BEFORE THE MEETING:

• Update your research and robotic projects using Google Doc and share it with the team. Most of you haven't done it. Please do hurry up. Thanks Danny for being the only one that started doing that.
  

WHAT YOU NEED TO BRING TO THE MEETING:

• Your NXT Robot and programs for your summer project. You can send your programs to me by e-mail instead of bring them with you on paper.

WHAT YOU WILL DO IN THE MEETING:

• Each person will be given a total of 10 minutes to talk about their project(s) and receive feedback from others.
• Simon and Ida will show a couple of NXT's running the PowerPuzzle missions.
• We will brainstorm what might be good research and robotic ideas for the 2008 season.
• We may have a guest/observer to evaluate our team.
  

If you have not shared your projects on Google Doc yet, please do it soon so we can know more about your projects before we meet.
If you have questions, please do not hesitate to send them by e-mail.

Thanks, Kingsum

NXT can be used for FTC competitions (middle-high school) starting this year

See details here

1. http://www.legoeducation.com/community/9/blogs/legoeducation/archive/2008/05/30/first-reveals-new-ftc-robotics-platform.aspx
2. http://www.firsttechchallenge.blogspot.com/
3. http://www.ortop.org/Documents/FTC_At_GLANCE.pdf
   

Next Meeting: Sunday Aug 3, 4:30pm-6:30pm

Hi Nanites,

Just a friendly reminder that our next meeting is Aug 3, 4:30pm.

If you have not shared your projects on Google Doc yet, please do it soon so we can know more about your projects before we meet.

If you have questions, please do not hesitate to send them by e-mail.

Simon and Ida will work together on the table missions and hope to show a good NXT robot when you come to our next meeting.

Thanks, Kingsum

Summer Projects are being added

The Nanites are sharing their summer projects online but they are only accessible by their team members for the time being. The projects will be made public in the fall when they are completed.

High Altitude NXT

See what a FLL team plans to send their NXT to (almost) space. Here is the link:
http://groups.google.com/group/hale-teams/web/fll-team-90-submission

They are studying UV radiation and ozone. Incidentally, two members of our own Nanites are going to research ozone as well.

Big Nanites in action

A group of simple robots can work together and do something great! See the article from IEEE:

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/jul08/6380

While they are simple robots as defined by their company, they are way more complicated than our Lego robots.

Darth Vader's NXT Apprentice: Droid Tank

This is way cool - check it out!
http://thenxtstep.blogspot.com/2008/07/clone-wars-new-star-wars-film-coming.html

The design is pretty well written. You can find it by following the link or directly here: http://mindstorms.lego.com/nxtlog/ProjectDisplay.aspx?id=8651cdc3-737f-47bd-bbd3-34c3b13731cd

Our Team Number is 497

Can you figure out if our team number is a prime number or not?

Climate Connections from NPR

The link will bring you to a lot of useful information for research.

Nanites Summer Agenda

Friday July 11 - last day to send "individual" robotics and research proposals to the coaches.

All the following meetings to be held in Simon's house.

Sunday Aug 3 - 4:30pm-6:30pm (practice session)
Sunday Aug 17 -4:30pm-6:30pm (practice session)
Friday Aug 29 - 7pm-9pm (summer projects graded by peers and coaches). Please send in your final written projects by e-mail before the meeting.

Card dealing robot

I probably will build a slightly different version of a card dealer when I get around to it. I used to play bridge regularly and it would really be nice to have a robot to deal the cards for me. It will need to be more sophisticated than the one shown. It has to deal 4 sets of 13 cards, randomly, well, randomly speaking.

Making your own Wall-e with NXT

I like what I saw. Anyone wants to build it?

NXT Machine Gun

Two views of the NXT Machine Gun entirely built by Simon.

http://picasaweb.google.com/kingsum.chow/2008LegoProjects?authkey=apKXuMPZf-U

How to Take Good Photos of LEGOs

I learned a lot of how to take better photos of LEGOs.

New Season for Climate Connections

http://www.firstlegoleague.org/default.aspx?pid=70

Let the new season begin with summer project assignments that will help you prepare for the new challenges. The assignments are not ready yet but they should be ready before the last day of school.

A collection of old video for Nanites's Robots

1. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2878333684982442565&hl=en
2. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6052590439230021451&hl=en
3. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7201057868417850831&hl=en
4. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4438485948573508375&hl=en
5. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5204025358765068785&hl=en
6. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3492848498976757920&hl=en

Some really cool NXT robots...

NXDave has some really cool NXT robots. Check them out.
http://mindstorms.lego.com/nxtlog/projectlist.aspx?memberid=179e28a0-323b-44f2-8cff-9cc088e7879d&username=NXDave

About HTK Open

The Nanites like the HTK FIRST LEGO League International Open. The organizers did a good job in communicating almost every aspect that we need to pay attention to before and during the tournament. Their scoring system for the entire event seems reasonably fair too. Our team did not win any trophy but they were happy to be in the 12th place overall. We had very strong competition within our bracket in our strengths, e.g. team work and programming, so we did not get call backs. We were happy that Brothers Keepers (also in our bracket) got the call back as we bonded with them right from day 1. We also made good friends with other teams such as Some Assembly Required. We were fortunate to be in the same alliance with these two teams, along with Roboloco from Columbia. We did well enough as an alliance to be placed third (out of 16) in that event. We really like the concept of the alliance event and perhaps we can try a mini version of that in Oregon?
The kids visited all other teams and shared our brochures and collected giveaways from them. They played together with many other teams. They had so much fun that sometimes they forgot to come back to practice. I guess that is the spirit of the tournament - have fun and enjoy! Many teams visited us and took photos with us too.
The judges for research, team work and robot design were all very friendly and encouraging. Many teams were very friendly and showed the spirit of FIRST as well. It is indeed a very friendly competition as teams are helping each other. For example, Some Assembly Required offered us parts that we did not bring along.
As for our own team, the only low point is our robot did not perform there, The robot used to score about 390 points failed to score above 300 points in the tournament. Thus the kids have a good lesson.

HTK International Open is Over Today

The Sylvan Nanites were happy to be placed 12th overall (out of 63 teams and 11 countries) with a balanced scores in all categories except that the robot that used to score ~390 points could not run properly on the tables. The kids enjoyed the 2 days of tournaments and met many new friends in very friendly competitions.

Time Limits...

Well, the Sylvan Nanites have now found it possible to accomplish all the missions within 2 minutes and 30 seconds.

Our highest score was 389 (It was actually in 2:32...)

But we also got 385 (2:18 - Our best time!)

Our maximum score is, if you look below, 395, since we took out the coal mission. (We did manage to score 395, but it was over time, so it did not count. Hopefully we can manage to make 395 within the limit, of course)

:)

Less than 1 week to go...

The exciting opportunity to meet with teams from other parts of the world is just 1 week away. The Nanites are still trying to get ready for the opportunity to share the joy of robotics, research and just having fun with other teams participating in the HTK International Open. Time is running out and we have to finalize the research projects, the programs, the missions and the attachments.

We need to get all 5 programs done in two and half minutes! Our best score was 395 points but it took 2 minutes and 49 seconds for that run.

We will get better!

A few tips on debugging

Throughout the years working with the kids and coaches, we have found a few techniques useful for debugging for both RCX and NXT.

1. Add an icon in your program to play a sound when you expect something to happen, then watch the robot's motion to see if the sound is played at the right time.

2. Add a brief case, or a container to store a debug delay time, say, 2 seconds. Add an icon with that delay to locations you want to check proper behavior. For performance runs, you replace the brief case or container with 0 seconds and you get no delay at the table.

3. Use data logging, available for both RCX and NXT, and log the sensor readings or other events to a file and then review the file.

There are certainly many other techniques. But the kids like 1 the most as they can understand it. Some advanced kids can understand and use 2 effectively. Using 3 to debug is too much work for most kids.

Sylvan Nanites Going To FLL International Open

The Sylvan Nanites are invited to FLL Internatianal Open at University of Minnesota, Minneapolis Campus. The FIRST Lego League International Event will be held from May 1 - 3, 2008.

http://www.hightechkids.org/?2-1-1111

Congratulations to the Sylvan Nanites!

Top 10 reasons I coach a FLL team

#10 I can play with toys that are targetted for kids.
#9 I can learn about mechanical engineering and structural design.
#8 I can build my own science experiments with easily exchangeable parts.
#7 I can model the real world with physical objects.
#6 I can mess up my basement with thousands of Lego pieces nobody complains about it.
#5 I can play with robots.
#4 I can work with great teachers, parents and kids from the neighborhood schools.
#3 I can help the school with Intel VMGP matching fund for my volunteering hours.
#2 I can get kids excited about math, science and engineering.
#1 I can see happy faces from the kids.

Forest Park Elementary - Science and Engineering Day - 2008

On Feb 22, 2008, I visited Forest Park Elementary School. I talked about math (magical squares) and LEGO physics (in terms of levers) to 2 second grade classes. They enjoyed both, but much more with LEGO levers.

Most of them solved the challenged problem - how to balance with the smallest weight on one side, and the 3 heavy weights on the other side. You can see their accomplishments in the photos.

http://picasaweb.google.com/kingsum.chow/ForestParkElementaryScienceAndEngineeringDay2ndGradeClasses?authkey=_cv6brxm8-M

Top Right Section is now "Work in progress"

The top right section, used to be reserved for Sylvan Nanites, is now renamed to "Work in progress" include other interesting projects. All documents and websites in that area will continue to have restricted access. Please let me know if you encounter any access problem.

New Classes from Lego Engineering

Just go there and find out if you want to register

http://www.legoengineering.com/component/option,com_classreg/Itemid,138/

Sylvan Nanites Projection Presentation

The project presentation is now listed to the right under "Our projects" http://docs.google.com/Presentation?id=dhrpwj57_58ch7f63hm

Science Projects

I added two projects done by the kids.

The Newton's Law of Cooling Down Project was done 1 year ago using Robolab and RCX to investigate the rate of cooling and looking into better coffee cups to keep the temperature.

Another project is about using Robolab and NXT to look into ways to optimize following the dark line with different wheels, axle lengths and other factors.

Sylvan Nanites took 3rd place in Young Team Award

The Sylvan Nanites won a well deserved 3rd place in the Oregon State Young Team Award among a total of 54 Young and Old teams on Sunday Jan 20.

Good job!

The following is the press about the Oregon State Championship:

http://www.ous.edu/news_and_information/news/012308.php

Why is FIRST Lego League one of my favorites?

The answer is actually very simple.

I like to play with colorful plastic pieces. I like to figure out mechanical problems. I like to program and get the robot to do the work.

More importantly, I like to work on a research topic that can have a positive impact on the world, e.g. Ocean Odyssey (2005) - http://www.firstlegoleague.org/nobanner.aspx?pid=17940, Nano Quest (2006) - http://www.firstlegoleague.org/nobanner.aspx?pid=21380, and Power Puzzle (2007) - http://www.firstlegoleague.org/default.aspx?pid=60

And most importantly, I can work with kids that are very enthusiastic about doing something great for the world.

Which one should I use? RCX vs NXT?

Many people have written about this subject. I think it really depends on your experience. If you have kids on your team that know a little about Robolab programming, RCX is still a very good choice. Otherwise, NXT should be used.

I have built several robots using RCX and NXT doing similar missions. The NXT robot is always a little bigger. The wires are harder to hide.

I have also used both Robolab and NXT-G programming. Robolab 2.9.4 is pretty good. One complaint I have about Robolab is the need to use container numbers. They are gone now as we can use simple variable names and formulae. In fact, formulae is better handled b Robolab programs than in NXT-G. For people new to programming, NXT-G is easier to use. For people who have been programming with Robolab, 2.9.4 does offer a lot of nice surprises.

Which technical document is most useful for FLL?

There are many good materials for FLL. They can help you and your team to improve in robot design. Among them, I found the document "Building LEGO Robots For FIRST LEGO League" from High Tech kids most useful.

http://www.hightechkids.org/?1-3-20-blrforfllversion1.3.pdf

It is well worth reading that document at least 3 times.

Coaching a team - Parents Involvement

Parents involvement has a direct impact on the success of the team.

First, the parents that provide the facility for team meetings and running missions have to deal with the mess the kids leave around on a regular basis. That is definitely not a small task if we want to keep the facility clean and tidy.

Second, all parents have to trust the coach to coach their kids professionally, covering both technical and behavioral issues. They have to adjust their busy schedules to send their kids and pick up their kids on time. They also have to provide the time and resources for the kids to learn from their experiments with robots and research for the science project.

Occassionally some parents will talk to the coach about waht they think should be done. I often encourage the parents to talk to their kids directly and let the kids bring up the suggestions. Let the kids evaluate if the suggestions are worth brought up in the first place. This would prepare them to make decisions for themselves for the team, and for their lives in the future.

The communication between the coach and the parents can be a huge overhead if the parents do not respond in a timely manner. I have not found a solution to this problem at all.

What exactly is coaching?

After working with the nanites for three years, I came to realize coaching is simply make the kids realize they can accomplish more than what they have done. Coaching is asking questions at the time the kids can receive them positively and act on them with their time and resource constraints. It is okay to set a high expectation but the kids should feel that it is reachable.

For example, we settled for 385 points for the state championship this year as the robot would not be capable for the max 400 points. Several kids feel that 385 points should be reachable. Once a realistic goal is agreed by the team members, we need to muster the resources we have through team work and allow the kids to step up to fill the needed roles, e.g. a team spokesperson that is familiar with the overall directions for the team, programmers that can backup each other, builders and testers that can put the robots on the tournament table. We need the kids to get the programs and robots to work reliably within the two and half minutes allocated. That is definitely not a small task in the next two weeks before the state championship.

In summary, coaching is simply setting a a reasonably callenging goal for the team and let the team react to it, acheive the goal, and feel good about fulfilling the potential for the team.

On Coaching

I would really like to write about my 3-year coaching experience working with these smart kids since they were 9 years old. But I don't know where to start.

Perhaps I can start with myself.

How did I get started?

I brought Ida to Intel Open House in April 2005. We visited a booth from ORTOP. Ida was fascinated by programming and getting a robot to move around. She said she would like to start a FLL team. In September of that year, Another parent and I approached the coach of the existing team from the same elementary school separately and we both decided to form a new team. Words got out and we quickly grew to 11 kids, all 4th graders at that time.

Managing a dozen of kids is no small task. We had lots of problems sharing computers, robots, ideas, and almost everything. We also noticed that some kids were less interested in doing real work while their parents wanted them to learn. This is a good lesson for us. We should not rely on the words from their parents about their interest and enthusiam in Lego Robotics.

To avoid having too many parents and too many kids, we asked each kid to write an essay about why they would like to join the team in 2006. We also got more parents involved and we formed 2 teams of about 6 kids each. The experienced kids stayed on the same team to become the Nanites while the new kids formed their own team so they were qualified for Rookies Award.

Each kid on the Nanites team has a robot and access to a portable computer for programming. That turns out to be a very good idea. We built multiple robots for competition and had a hot spare whenever we participated in a tournament.

The problems in 2006 were mostly related to resolving conflicts among kids, and among parents too. The most difficult thing is to figure out a role for each individual kid and parent so we could co-exist together. We learned a lot about team work and gracious professionalism.

Many kids would like to return to FLL again in 2007. I just could not take all of them. We encouraged a few parents to form their own team as their kids already learned a lot from being the Nanites in 2006. We took a couple of new kids from the other team hoping that new ideas as a result of diversification would help the team.

The 2007 season is not over yet. Stay tuned.