Ryan has been participating in a Lego Mindstorms afterschool class for the past few months. About a week ago, it was time to put his robot to the test at a maze competition held at Lagoon as part of the USU Physics Day.
The kids got to ride the rides for about 1/2 the day. Oddly enough, one of the favorite rides of the day was the ferris wheel. Maybe that was because there wasn't a lot of kids riding it, so if you did, you actually got to ride it, rather than just stop a bajillion times while people get on and off.The kids got these awesome yellow t-shirts and a pain-in-the neck name tag.
The kids worked in pairs over the last few months building a robot with legos and writing the software to make the robot negotiate its way through a maze. This is Ryan and his buddy Connor checking their computer software at the beginning of the competition.
Just a look a the 20 kids (10 teams) checking out their computer programs before taking the robots to the maze.
Ryan and Connor with their robot.
The kids had plenty of time to run their robot through a practice maze before the competition.
Part of the competition is an interview with two different judges, where the kids have to explain their computer program and talk about their learning experience with Mindstorms. Both partners are supposed to be equally knowledgeable about their computer program, but Ryan seemed to do more of the actual "explaining". He did a great job at this. The judges were awesome too -- they really sat down with each team and talked with them about their robot. They had some great conversations. There was none of this "hurry up, I'm bored", polite nodding and scribbling notes business from any of the judges.
Here's Ryan putting the robot into competition maze action.
Here's the robot going through the maze. The maze is timed. The faster the robot goes through the maze, the better. There is a time limit though -- 5 minutes. Also, if you have to "help" your robot, you get point deductions. Ryan and Connors robot was doing awesome and just about to cross the finish line, when it decided to back-track. Grrrr! They ended up helping it once and it finished the maze somewhere in the 2 minute range. The fastest robot finished in 46 seconds without help and the slowest robot finished in 4 minutes, 55 seconds, with a few helps. So, there's quite a range and Ryan and Connor finished in the middle. Well done!
I love the look on the kids faces as they watched their robot do it's thing. GO! Go! Go!
Oh man, why'd it turn around? It was almost done! Is it gonna make it back to the finish line?
In the end, the girl team won first place and actually won robots of their own! Wow! Here's the school team.
There were four schools competing in the maze competition. Our school came in second overall --woohoo! Everybody got t-shirts and gift certificates to restaurants and Boondocks. It was a fun day at Lagoon too. The class is a bit pricey in my opinion, but I think it was a fabulous opportunity for the kids and I would recommend it to anyone.
The kids worked in pairs over the last few months building a robot with legos and writing the software to make the robot negotiate its way through a maze. This is Ryan and his buddy Connor checking their computer software at the beginning of the competition.
Just a look a the 20 kids (10 teams) checking out their computer programs before taking the robots to the maze.
Ryan and Connor with their robot.
The kids had plenty of time to run their robot through a practice maze before the competition.
Part of the competition is an interview with two different judges, where the kids have to explain their computer program and talk about their learning experience with Mindstorms. Both partners are supposed to be equally knowledgeable about their computer program, but Ryan seemed to do more of the actual "explaining". He did a great job at this. The judges were awesome too -- they really sat down with each team and talked with them about their robot. They had some great conversations. There was none of this "hurry up, I'm bored", polite nodding and scribbling notes business from any of the judges. 
Here's Ryan putting the robot into competition maze action.
Here's the robot going through the maze. The maze is timed. The faster the robot goes through the maze, the better. There is a time limit though -- 5 minutes. Also, if you have to "help" your robot, you get point deductions. Ryan and Connors robot was doing awesome and just about to cross the finish line, when it decided to back-track. Grrrr! They ended up helping it once and it finished the maze somewhere in the 2 minute range. The fastest robot finished in 46 seconds without help and the slowest robot finished in 4 minutes, 55 seconds, with a few helps. So, there's quite a range and Ryan and Connor finished in the middle. Well done!
I love the look on the kids faces as they watched their robot do it's thing. GO! Go! Go!
Oh man, why'd it turn around? It was almost done! Is it gonna make it back to the finish line?
In the end, the girl team won first place and actually won robots of their own! Wow! Here's the school team.
There were four schools competing in the maze competition. Our school came in second overall --woohoo! Everybody got t-shirts and gift certificates to restaurants and Boondocks. It was a fun day at Lagoon too. The class is a bit pricey in my opinion, but I think it was a fabulous opportunity for the kids and I would recommend it to anyone. 
1 comment:
Way to go Ryan!! This is about the awesomest thing ever. I would love to get that program at our school. I very nearly got our kids one of those robots for Christmas last year, but decided to wait at least a year and talk to some other people who had used them. I think that's super duper excellent.
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