Competition Robot Design

This year I've been trying to get more teams doing FIRST Lego League in Victoria and the more new coaches I talk to the more I realise their is a lot of misconception about what a competition robot needs to be. So lets look at some of those myths:

The Robot Must Be 100% Designed by the Students

False - ideally the robot should be 100% the students work, but nobody in FLL expects a rookie team of 9-10 year olds to create a World Festival standard robot.  The key is that students give credit where credit is due, it's fine to take an idea of the internet but don't turn up saying we designed this robot.  What the judges want to hear is where you got the design from, why you chose it, how does it work, which parts did you design, how did you come up with attachments. 

The Robot Needs to Be Complex

False - Many teams enter FLL using the standard EV3 education kit robot design. It doesn't have to be fancy and involve huge attachments.  KIS - Keep It Simple, and build on the team knowledge each year. 

The Coach Needs to Know How to Build a Robot

False - Nothing gives me more pleasure than my students coming up with something I don't understand. It shows they are learning and not afraid to experiment and apply new skills. Have faith that the students will use their creativity to solve problems.  As a coach at this point your role changes from showing to questioning.  As the team how the robot works? Can they make it stronger? Can they make it smaller/more compact? Can they use fewer pieces?

Success is the Most Important Thing

False - Lots of coaches (and parents) go into the competition wanting their team to win and sometimes that leads to coaches having a little too much involvement in the robot design. Allow the students to fail at times, it's ok for the robot to not work 100% of the time or for something to fall off mid run.  Never underestimate what you're doing to a students confidence level if you tell them their idea isn't any good and they should just use what you designed. Next time the student tries to make something are they going to try themselves or go straight to you for help?  

So what to do as a rookie team?

Talk as a team about the approach they want to take. Are they confident building? Do they have time? Many teams won't get much more than 1-2 hours a week to prepare their FLL entry and with a project to do as well sometimes they would prefer to jump straight into the programming. 

If they are going to build their own robot you can start before the mat is released in late August, come up with a basic robot design and that way when the challenge is released you can just make minor changes based on the new challenges. For example, does your robot need high clearance like in Nature's Fury, fit into tight spaces (World Class) or climb a ramp or stairs (Senior Solutions). 

If they would like to use somebody else's design, 'shop' around, look at different designs and talk about which one they think suits them best.  Which one has mechanisms they understand and can talk about, remember, if they don't understand how the robot works they really shouldn't use it.  Make sure they understand they need to give credit to the designer and not claim the work as their own. 

If they're interested in using somebody else's design check out 'Competition Robot V1' from the Resource Download section of this blog. It can be made from ONE EV3 Education box (with the exception of a second colour sensor).  It is adapted from a design on fllcasts.com and is a good place for teams to start. The robot design easily allows for attachments (see future blog posts) and has lots of room for the students to modify the design with new attachments, motors and sensors. 

Yoshihto Isogawa - My Engineering Lesson Saviour

Like most teachers I don't have a background in engineering furthermore like a lot of teachers I don't really consider myself to have an engineering brain. As a result most of the time I've shied away from running these sorts of lessons and instead chose to focus on a standard EV3 (or NXT) model and taught programming instead.

However, this is not always what suits my students.  Kids charge towards "Lego Robotics" classes like it's going to involve building huge robots and can easily get disheartened when the lesson is just about sitting on a computer and dragging colour blocks around.  So what's a teacher to do with this conundrum?  Let loose the control and let students free build? Set a task hoping the students can work out a solution by themselves? (see previous post about Context Help for reasons this can be unsuccessful).  I've tried both of these with little success.  I also tried introducing Simple Machine lessons to the younger grades and then hoping those skills develop by the time they get to EV3 (again with little success).

Earlier this year my saviour came along, Yoshihito Isogawa.

Yoshihito has around 40 years experience working with Lego and the brilliance of his books comes from the complete lack of text.  Usually the books have a few pages of introduction at the front but from there on it's about the images.  Simple icons show if the model is about gearing, levers, angle of rotation etc and each model is photographed from a variety of angles to help the reader understand it.

The models are not super complex robots that do it all, instead they are simple mechanisms, 2-3 gears, a rubber band, a double bend liftarm.  It is up to the reader to build the model, understand how the mechanism works and either combine it with another design or adapt it to fit their purpose. 

For my students I've built a variety of these models which will act as a library for FIRST Lego League.  Using these designs the students can see how to change the angle of rotation using gears (or another Lego element) but from there it is up to them to work out how to use this mechanism to solve a challenge (and attach it to their robot). 

Yoshihito has four books available on Amazon of which I recommend the EV3 Ideas book as the best.  It uses all modern Lego elements while the Technic Idea books use the older style technic bricks, still great but the pieces are less likely to be found in the school (or personal) Lego stash. 

The LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 Idea Book: 181 Simple Machines and Clever Contraptions

The LEGO Technic Idea Book: Simple Machines

The LEGO Technic Idea Book: Fantastic Contraptions 

The LEGO Technic Idea Book: Wheeled Wonders

(yes these are affiliate links, if you're going to buy the books use these links and help kick back some money for the work I put into this blog, it won't cost you any extra and helps me out)

Context Help

One of the approaches I take in the classroom when introducing students to EV3 is to ask the students to find out for themselves.

It has mixed success, some students relish this opportunity to really dive into the program and work things out for themselves while others stare blankly at the screen and before asking for help.  I believe the approach is beneficial for students as it asks them to think about what they know, and search for resources to help them be it other students, built in guides, youtube or other websites. These students also have a better longterm understanding and are able to problem solve while the screen staring group struggle to solve problems.  

Of course I usually give the students some guidance on where to find help (see future post about helpful websites) but recently I discovered a feature of Lego Mindstorms EV3 called 'context help'.

The idea behind context help is that a little help box pops up with a description of whatever the mouse is hovering over.  While some students can work out what the little icons mean (eg, hourglass means wait) other learners prefer the text to help them.  

Sometimes the help can be slow to load depending on where the mouse is hovering but I find by clicking on the unknown button it usually brings it up a little quicker.

It's a great simple tip that can help students to solve a problem without showing them the answer. 

FIRST Lego League

While I'm interested in using Lego Robotics in the classroom in any way possible I admit my true passion lies with FIRST Lego League (FLL).

FLL is a Lego Robotics competition for students aged 9-16 and in 2014 over 265,000 students competed across the globe.  Each year FLL has a theme that is based around a real world issue. In the past themes have included Senior Solutions (2012) - focusing on the challenges faced by the elderly in society, Natures Fury (2013) - learning about natural disasters and World Class (2014) - the changing face of education and how students learn. The competition is split into four parts:

• Robot Game - played on a 2362x1143mm table, students build a program an autonomous robot capable of solving a variety of lego model challenges related to the theme, for example rescuing a Lego cat and dog from a natural disaster. At the competition students compete in three 2:30 minutes runs where the robot solves challenges for points.
• Project - students research an issue to do with the theme. They identify a problem and propose (and sometimes implement) a solution to the problem sharing it with the relevant stakeholders. At the competition, students present their problem and solutions to a panel of judges.
• Robot Design - students present their robot which they designed, built and programmed to a panel of judges (often industry experts).  They talk about the challenges they faced and hopefully overcame as well as describing the path they followed to achieve their goals.  They also present their programming demonstrating how they solved the challenges on the table.
• Core Values - students show how they have worked as a team honouring the FIRST values. Judging for this component often involves students participating in a short activity or challenge to help demonstrate how they worked as a team.

Each part is equally weighted although many teams place a higher empathise on the Robot Game as it is typically the part which captures the students imagination the most.

As a coach I love FLL for the depth of learning the students need to go into. The different components of the competition require the students to really think about the theme and the focus on core values ensure the students think about how they act and grow as young engineers.

The competitions are also very non competitive with students really encouraging each other regardless of their abilities.  At any one tournament it's not uncommon to see some teams completing >80% of the challenges on the tables while other teams still perform well completing <20%.  The focus is not on how much they achieve but the journey the took to get their.

In coming posts I'll be talking about the role of a coach in the team and how to balance helping students without doing the work for them as well as some resources I've found useful in the past in preparing the team for the tournament.

Welcome to Mr Mic Robotics

As I travel further and further down the path of teaching with Lego Robotics I will be starting to upload and share resources, ideas, lessons and designs.

Please feel free to leave a comment, I'd love to hear your thoughts, ideas and feedback.