Robotics

Chaffee had two teams compete in the Hampton Cove FIRST Lego League Qualifier. The students who competed were in the two 5th grade classes. The students worked very hard to get ready for the tournament.
The tournament consists of three areas where the teams are judged. The first area for judging is based on a presentation of a solution to a community problem. This year the topic was Senior Solutions. The students learned about the various problems that senior citizens face. They read articles about challenges for seniors and interviewed seniors. Next they had to chose one of the challenges and create a solution. Team 1188 chose to make a model of a robotic medicine dispenser. They made both a lego model and a CAD model. Team 1239 chose to make a robotic dog that helped with medicine, falling, exercise and communicating with friends. Team 1239 presented their idea as a commercial.

The second area of judging was based on completion of missions. The tournament has a competition field with a variety of objects constructed of Legos. The teams must program an NXT robot to complete as many of the missions as possible. Both teams had to first learn how to program the robots. They used curriculum from Carnige Melon University to learn how to move forward, backward, turn and use sensors. Then they had to apply their learning to the missions. It was challenging but both teams were able to successfully accomplish a number of the missions.

The last area of judging was teamwork. The teams were given a problem to solve at the tournament so the judges could observe how they worked together to solve the problem. This year it was a story telling problem. The teams had lots of preparation for this event through our unit last year called Team Challenge and on working together on the other areas of judging.

I was very proud that Team 1239 was awarded a third place trophy for their teamwork. Both teams did a great job. They learned a ton and had a lot of fun.