Showing posts with label NRC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NRC. Show all posts

Saturday, 30 July 2011

Moonbots 2011 Playfield & Mission

I was invited over to give the Techno Inventors a hand in the Phase 2 of their Moonbots 2011 competition. Below is the overall playfield.


It is actually very huge,  with 5 x 5 large lego plates as the base! The whole playfield is huge, with the walls at the back with Earth as the background was really cool. There is a landing pad which is black in colour situated at the left side of the photo.


These are 4 of these (Black & Orange) object to pickup from the field. It is called Helium-3 and worth 15 points each. Please note the 4 brick high wall ridges that the vehicle would have to traverse to get to the other side of the play field!



This is a photo taken low within the Crater Canvin. Please note that it has been filed with 2000 orange 1x1 bricks making it rather impossible for a vehicle to traverse into this crater, let alone get out of it, specially when it is surrounded with a 4 brick high ridge!!?? There are also 4 Water Ice element (White & Blue) object to collect while in here. Each is worth only 10 points. Please note the backgrouns has the red marking and some plus signs.... it is known as the Heritage Artifacts. Capturing a image of it will grant you 20 points!

Here are the breakdown of the points on the Playfield (350 points total)
  • Lander Dismount (leaving the base/landing site) - [20 points]
  • Discover Water Ice (pick up Blue & White objects) - [10 points x 6 units]
  • Survive the Lunar Night (Stay on top of the Peak of Eternal Light for 5 second) - [30 points] 
  • Discover Helium 3 (pickup up Black & Orange objects) - [15 points x 4 units]
  • Capture Mission Video (video the entire run of the mission) - [20 points]
  • Photography the Heritage Artifacts (video the Heritage Artifacts) - [20 points]
  • Return to Base (touch the base) - [20 points]
  • Return Elements to base - [x2 points of each element]
  • Touch Penalty - [minus 50 points each time]

Opinion and Play difficulty of the Moonbots 2011
  • Playfield is build with Lego Plates. Surface is studed making the movement of the vehicle inaccurate
  • Ridge is at least 4 bricks high, make it difficult for the vehicle to traverse over it
  • Crater Cravin is filled with 2000 pieces of 1x1 bricks making it almost impossible to be moving accurately within the crater. 
  • Getting out of the crater would also be impossible as there is no traction on the wheels.
  • As all the elements are very similar, designing only 1 arm to collect/pick up the elements is required
Overall, it is no easy mission. Compared to FLL or NRC it has its own challenges. Please note that there is only about 6 weeks time provided to complete the mission as well as the other activities as per the Moonbots requirements.

Total scoring for Phase 2 is as follows
  • Blogging requirement met (5% weighting)
  • Robot design proposal turned in on time and the design matches the robot construction (15% weighting)
  • Creativity and technical merit of STEM Outreach project (40% weighting)
  • The Science Mission Score achieved during the Live Mission Webcast (40% weighting)

Thursday, 18 March 2010

NRC 2010

The events for NRC 2010 is as follows

Regular Category
1. Primary School - Adventure Race
2. Lower Secondary - Treasure Hunt
3. Upper Secondary - Vertical Limit

Open Category
Theme: Robot Promote Tourism

Full details on rules available here.

Registration form available here. Closing date is 30 April 2010.

Good Luck to all.

**Details are obtain from Jason's blog (Sasbadi Staff)

Thursday, 27 March 2008

National Robotics Competition 2008 (NRC)

It is the time of the year again, the National Robotics Competition 2008 have just been announced. The question this year is not as simple as it used to be. It would be challenging for all.

You can view more details of the competition from the Sasbadi's website.

The three categories/theme are as follows:-
  • Robot Recycling - Primary School Category. Full details here.
  • Robot Energizing - Lower Secondary Category. Full details here.
  • Robot Planting - Upper Secondary Category. Full details here.
Sample robots and sample NXT-G programming have been provided by Sasbadi. I guess that will be the lower bar that we all have to at least meet :0

I have 2 sets of students who would be competiting in the competition. One for the Lower and the Upper Secondary category.

It won't be an easy task! Anyone can build a robot, but can you build an effecient, fast and effective robot?

Can you build the Winning Robot?