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)

Videos of Team "The Light Warriors" at FFL 2010

Congratulations to Team "The Light Warriors" from REAL International School, Hulu Langat who won Best Overall Robot Design award at the recent FIRST Lego League (FLL). The team comprised (in alphabetical order of surname):

1. Thavish Annal
   
2. Sabrina Chia Chee Teng
3. Massimiliano Daldoss
4. Koh Phey Faye
5. Melissa Lim May Lyn
6. Shue Yuann Shin
7. Kabilan Subramaniam
8. Eddy Tan Jia Cheng
9. Wayne Tan
10. Jonathan Yap

The team is also accompanied by:

1. Daniel Tsen (Team Manager)
2. Erol Hujdur (Coach)
3. Ong Poh Lai (Coach)
4. Eric Tan (Coach)
5. Ong Poh Seng (Coach)

Here are the videos that depict performance of Team "The Light Warriors" during the two-day event at National Science Centre, Kuala Lumpur.

Project Presentation

Technical Presentation (Part 1)

Technical Presentation (Part 2)

Mission (Round 1)

Mission (Round 2)

Mission (Round 3)

Award Presentation

Keep up the good work!

FLL 2010 - Smart Move - Best Overall Robot Design Award - Real International (Seri Suria)

First I would like to congratulate all the kids from Real International (Seri Suria) for a job well done in bringing home a Prize (Best Overall Robot Design Award) from the FLL 2010 Smart Move competition held on the 17 & 18 March 2010.

Preparations were intense, and all of the kids only really had 4 full days to complete the robot, practise the missions and organise the presentation.

I would also like to thank Daniel, Erol, Poh Lai and Poh Seng for putting in all their time and effort into preparing the kids. All would not be possible if everybody did not play their own role.

I would say, a Prize is always nice, but I guess we would have work even harder for the FLL 2011, as I noticed the Team to beat would be SJKC Jalan Davidson, of which their robots went flawlessly, perfect in a sense. Their robot was well taught with great innovation and ideas.

Attending the FLL for the first time was a different experience. I guess it was the different methods they used to judge needs sometime to get used to. Our presentation was not as well done as it should. We didnt have props and costumes like the other teams.

I guess overall, for a first year contender in any Robotics competition, we did great. We just have to buck up, as the other schools out there are years ahead, in terms of LEGO Robotics.

So, no rest for the wicked, since the NRC 2010 question is already out... I guess training would have to start.... again.....

More photos of FLL 2010 at Jason's Blog (Sasbadi Staff)

FLL 2009/2010

First Lego League holds a competition yearly, with the same question being used for the whole world. What I love about the FLL is that, everyone competes using the same questions, same play field, as well as same lego sets. Where all remains the same, only their creativity/ingenuity of each team to solve the problem will make them the winning team!

You can view the full FLL rules for FLL Smart Move 2009/2010 here.

For a quick summary of what you will expect from the FLL Smart Move 2009/2010, you can view the video below