And now for our next trick

So you have met Marvin. (see previous post if you haven't) and here are some of the things he can do.

The cooker task

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WB4L4Df2Y_c&feature=youtu.be


The transition table. This is the best attempt we have on film. Marvin can do this better but is clearly camera shy.


http://youtu.be/xpykrvNadGE


This is our final run on the day. Our lowest scoring but it gives you an idea of the way the whole thing looks.


http://youtu.be/MQQ1iOcdGi0

The programmers have worked very hard and learnt many new skills. These include line following, light callibration, using the sensors, trouble shooting programmes, how to measure the battery capacity, how to measure how far the robot goes without doing loads of trial and error programming. In fact the list of minor details they have learnt to account for appears endless and would make for dull blogging.

here are our other robot trials on the day.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwcAuKfctfTTUEJhRTczSTVwSjA/edit?usp=sharing

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwcAuKfctfTTTVU1NVduU3U4b00/edit?usp=sharing

The Project

A second aspect of the FLL process, one that is equally important with the robot game, is the project. This seasons topic was Senior Solutions. The team had to find and interview a person over the age of 65 and ask them how life had changed as they aged. From this the team had to look at some of the difficulties that older people had encountered and come up with a practical solution to these problems.

We started by everyone in the team interviewing their grandparents. The team then brought transcripts of the manuscript back to the meeting and we looked at the various problems. There were many. However the biggest thing we noticed was an age split. Many of the people we interviewed were only just over 65. They said they found life easier, less pressured, they had more money, more time and less responsibility. Some of the older people, those over the age of 80, were beginning to experience more problems.

We looked at deafness, difficulties in opening the car door in the wind, robotic hoovers, getting around out and about when you can't hear so well. ageism and a small problem with plug sockets.
These were narrowed down to ageism which the team felt was a very important aspect of getting older and the small problem with the plug sockets.

We asked Quinn's Grandma to be our senior partner. She used to lecture on social policy at Salford University and had plenty of information for us. We spent an afternoon chatting to her about her experience of retirement, what ageism she had experienced and how she thought we could tackle it. In order to share what we found we came up with an information leaflet which the team then distributed at local libraries, doctors and AGE UK shops.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwcAuKfctfTTOVJ4MEF2RWtHbkE/edit?usp=sharing

As a team we were sure that the ageism was the most important problem we had encountered, however we were not sure it was what the judging panel were looking for. The competition is geared very much towards training people for industry. We felt they might be interested in a product. So we decided to tackle the plugs problem. Laurence's grandma lives in sheltered housing and all the plug sockets have been raised to waist height so it is easy to plug things in without bending down. There is however a fundamental design flaw. If you drop a plug you cannot pick it back up again.


After much design modification, debate, trial and error and struggles with materials we came up with a simple plug holder.

 

This model is made of wood but we envision the final product to be made in similar plastic to a plug socket which we think would make it cheap and easy to manufacture. It fits round the plug socket like this

 

 

 

Unfortunately the next picture is not so good as I don't have any plug sockets in my house that are raised but when you drop a plug, this happens.

 

 

We also think it will double up as a good way of keeping cables organised and potentially it has uses in hospitals where plugs are usually raised behind beds,  and for people of all ages who have difficulty with bending. It was also important to us that the plug holder was discrete, and did not look like a living aid as we did not want to contribute to the social stereotyping.

The team then had to present this to a judge. One of the parents captured this on video the link to which is below.

http://youtu.be/RJJe36KmRio

 

Watching the film back makes me even more proud of what we achieved, the conditions under which they gave their presentation were less than favourable. it was easier to hear on the day than the film suggests but still it was noisy and distracting and overall they did really well to keep it all together. It's not clear from the film but they also had a PowerPoint running in the background which is below.

Meet Marvin

OK so here he is.

We named him Marvin after the famous depressed robot from the hitch hikers guide to the galaxy, perhaps not very original but still, in the end, it suited him.

Here are all the many things Marvin can do. Firstly you will notice there is a simple scoop at the front. This allows the robot to push things across the field mat and into position. The two sticks in the centre of the scoop keep tall, tricky thing in place so we can get the programming more accurate. This scoop also raises so it can be used to lift things and trap things for dragging back to base (which is one of the things he did very well on the day).

When the scoop is raised the two sticks also act as a holder for the bowling ball so it can be launched at the bowling pins.

On the side and back of the robot are two little contraptions that help keep the wires out of the way of the wheels and other moving parts of the robot. One of them is the long stick at the back with all the wires threaded through, the other is just on the side and is only for the colour sensor.

On a stalk at the side is an additional colour sensor which you can see really well in the first two photo's. This tracked along and found the green medicine bottle which was then picked up by the little sticky out backwards bit of scoop you can see in the photo below.

Those sticky out bit was also used to trap the chair and bring it back to base and had the potential to pick up the lower shopping bag. This photo also shows the other important feature really well, which is the other sensors, one colour for finding green on the mat and one light so the robot can follow a line. These are important for accurate positioning on the mat, (although it is interesting to note that the winning team did not use line following at all, finding it too slow). You can also see from this photo that the central sticks fold back along the top of the scoop when they are not needed.

The there is this little stick.

located just behind the front wheels it catches one of the levers on the way past and gives us more points!!

Also there is this little stick 

which can be added anywhere on the scoop to lift levers or pick things up.

So that's Marvin. And that is how we came third in the design. there was only one task on the mat he was not capable of achieving and we know how we would fix that now. Sadly we were unable to programme him to do everything, but then neither could anyone else. It seems you have to choose wisely from among the tasks and work hard to solve those you can, but also keep an eye on the design to make sure it can do more that will be required of it. If you pont this robot at any of the tasks it can do them, its getting there from base, lining up accurately and all within the time and with nervous fingers.

 

The tasks we had to do are in this little video below. It takes a while to watch but for those really interested in the process, then here it is.

 

http://youtu.be/116QPFHygYk

The Big Day

So here we are all dressed up and ready to go!

We had a great day at our FLL tournament. It is so hard to put into words what the experience was like. It was exciting and terrifying and amazing to be a part of. I think this was especially so as it seemed unlikely we would get there at all. The odds were against us from the start as the whole competition is set up for schools and existing clubs who have both financial and practical support to call on. But we did get there and we did it in style.

Following long months of fund raising and team building, learning to work together and how to make up again when we didn't manage it, we finally unveiled Marvin to the world. Marvin is our robot by the way and we will introduce him in a separate post later on. There is so much to tell about the process now it is over and we are no longer competing I am going to tackle it in a few sections over the next week or so.

It turns out that the robot game is a nightmare for everyone. It wasn't just that we were new or inexperienced, the whole thing just has so many variables that a lot can go wrong even for the most experienced teams. If Marvin had done all the things we had programmed him to we would have made the semi-finals but it seems that is not the way it goes at these things. In fact Marvin did very little that was asked of him and yet we came 5th over all in the robot game, just outside the semi-finals. Watching the final was heartbreaking, there was so much at stake as only one team goes through to the next round, some of the parents were quite glad we didn't have to endure it, it was hard enough to watch in the early rounds.

As well as the robot game the team are also interviewed about the design of the robot and the programmes on it, asked to complete a team building task, they have to present all their research, in this case into ageism and plug socket design (more interesting than it sounds). In addition there is a roving interview team who catch team members on the hop during the day. Laurence did us proud despite having the flu as all the others were on rides somewhere in the Lego centre.

We know we came third in the robot design category which is extraordinary for a rookie team but we are waiting for the centre to locate our score sheets and send them to us before we know how we did on the rest of the criteria.

We must have done OK because we were awarded a judges commendation award which we think means they likes us a lot, we were good, but there were others better than us. It's also a means of encouraging us. It's worth having another go - a kind of you did really well and we want to give you something trophy. So here it is...

and here we are with it...

 The purple monster in the photos was a last minute mascot addition. He was named by the team and one of the judges as Mad Dr. Squeekums and if we do try this again I'm sure he will be a fixture in the future.

After all the excitement was over we went back to Maria's house for a post match party, unfortunately most of us were tired and a few team members were quite poorly on the day so it turned into X-box and Pizza, which is what they have all been desperate to do anyway.

We are hoping to arrange an full X-Box and trampoline day at Maria's house, to make up for all those times they were dragged away to play with robots or go through presentation scripts yet again!!!

So now all that remains is the Oscar speech. Three huge thank yous are needed. Firstly to the lovely Maria who lent us her house for the duration of the competition. One of the biggest headaches I had as team coach was finding somewhere to meet and in the end it was just too expensive or inconvenient. Maria stepping into the gap made it possible for us to carry on in the competition and the last week was especially busy in her house!! Secondly Jeremy who mentored the programmers in using the NXT software. Jeremy and his family kindly donated their house and their time to making this possible. He taught them complex programming, printed t-shirts and leaflets, and generally spent plenty of time reading up on NXT software and what we needed to learn. And finally to Sophie who mentored the team through the design process for the project side of things, helping them clarify their thoughts around what they wanted from their design and how they would make it appealing, who would but it etc., etc.,

And then there are the parents who ferried children around, Paul who helped with the table, former team members who were all a part of getting to this point, Sean at Techniquest who first introduced us to NXT programming, Dave who designed and maintained a wiki for them to practice some basic programming and Tara who helped with the session. I'm sure there are many more but all will have been acknowledged in this blog somewhere.

So Thanks. A great team effort.

The day it all went wrong!!

There's always one, in the run up to any deadline, there is always one day when nothing goes your way. It is also, always, something unexpected. Rather than broken props or forgotten lines, bad light conditions or dead lap tops, we actually managed to break the robot.

It turns out that Marvin, as our robot has been christened, does not get along well with new, good quality batteries. It went completely bonkers while trying to place the gardening patch where it was supposed to be and snapped one of the connectors holding on the back wheel as it careened out of control over the transition table. We did also manage to make hi break dance at one point!!

Of course it took a lot of head scratching to figure out why everything had gone so wrong when none of the programs had been changed. Fortunately we decided not to change anything until we had been through all the programs to find out what else didn't work. By the time we had done that, the batteries had run down a bit and Marvin was back under control.

We have found a huge problem in one of the programs though, it just takes too long to line up accurately so we are going to have to come up with a last minute plan. Sam and Jeremy to the rescue!!

One more session on Monday to practice our presentation, practice our interview and practice lining up. We have no idea whether we can do the robot game within the time or whether we can line up when the table is raise doff the floor. It's all getting a bit close to the wire.

5 days to go

One week to go!!

Well the tension is mounting, the last minute scrabble round for props is upon us, it is the last chance to iron out glitches in computer programmes, power point presentations and scripts. In exactly one week from now we will know how well all our work has paid off. This time next week we will have done it, we will have competed in our first FLL tournament.

Part of the process is to be interviewed as a team on both the project and how we tackled the robot game. This is no easy matter, as we found out today, as we do not know what the questions will be. Trying to answer as a team is tricky; usually everyone aanswers at once, pr no one answers at all. Everyone needs to listen to everyone else, give everyone a chance to speak and at the same time make sure all the information has been given that might be needed. Members of the team who may be reluctant to speak in a group need to be given a chance and those who have a tendency to speak all the time need to give everyone a chance.

The presentation is great. The final touch will be for everyone to learn lines so that they are not juggling scripts and props and they can look at the judging panel. The power point that they have put together is largely sorted out and on Friday we are going to work on making sure it is where we need it as we had some technical difficulties accessing it on the laptop today.

The robot game needs some tweaking and loads of practise, of course the more we practise the more problems we find, but we are generating a reliable list of thing that need to be checked before the robot leaves base. There are a few minor programming glitches to be overcome and we still need to make sure we all know what we need to do when.

It's all getting a bit exciting!!

Making progress

After a couple of frustrating weeks we are starting to get to grips with this robot. The trick, for us at least, is to keep it simple. Last week we had some difficulty with the line following programme. The robot could not operate in the ambient light in the room, it was chucking it down outside and the light in the room was very dim. The result of this was that the robot could not 'see' the green line it was looking for and went off on a random course of its own as it circled round to try and find a green line so it could turn onto the transition table. The result was a devastated table and some puzzled programmers. The dim light also meant that the robot picked up a grey line between base and the gardening patch, thought it was green and turned straight into the woodworking table.

All in all it was a bit of a disaster but it resulted in an important decision to only use the light sensors when absolutely necessary. This might seem obvious but the decision has important consequences. Using the cues on the field mat means you reduce the errors in your programming, so we will loose a good way of keeping the robot on track. It is possible to calibrate the light sensors so the robot can adjust to the ambient light conditions however we are having a little trouble learning how to do this consistently. Sam will still be doing some complex line following for the transition table and medicine bottle tasks but otherwise we will stick to positioning and practice.

We now have 3 tasks programmed and two with an almost complete programme that needs a little tweaking. Overall the whole thing feels a lot better.

The project is almost complete. we will be meeting with our design mentor next Wednesday to make a prototype of our product and then the script can be completed and rehearsed. The team need to perform for an audience as part of the process so we need to get cracking with the acting parts and learning the lines. Then it's practice, practice, practice!!!