Competition Videos

http://www.youtube.com/user/MillerbotsRules

Reading First Forum Tips

I like the following posts in First Forum re some lurch steering problem we have. (quoted from  http://forums.usfirst.org/showthread.php?t=12856&page=3)   LOL Comets, BTW, is an all-girls team that won THE Championship Award. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1xqRx45Bws&playnext=1&list=PLD6FB6D5DFB96B47C&index=1     09-19-2009, 11:26 AM

LOLComets Member   Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Southern California Posts: 47

Re: NXT move vs motor block help needed Looking at how this topic has changed, and if I am not mistaken, you have two issues: 1. Robot veers in a certain direction when it starts (we have the same problem) 2. Turns using the move or motor block are not consistent (everyone has that problem) For the first item, our team decided to run the robot for the first 50 degrees at different powers supplied to each motor. For example, if your robot veers left (towards the B motor), then your B motor block would run at 45% power and the right (C motor block) would use 50% power. Both blocks would use unlimited and the rotation sensor would be used to change the power and remaining degrees you want your robot to move. For the second item, I would suggest you accept that slippage, surface, and of course the robot is made out of plastic is not precise. You can minimize the turns using a different method to arrive at the desired destination, and design attachments to allow for the variability, i.e., your robot will end at a specific spot in a + or - 2 inches, so my attachments have to be wider. Getting your kids involved in learning and understanding PID is really a function of their age and interest. However, PID is something they cannot control. So the challenge is to solve the symptom of the problem, which is perhaps the approach that would be appropriate.

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#25   09-19-2009, 12:34 PM

GotRobot? Senior Member   Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Elgin, Illinois Posts: 197

Re: NXT move vs motor block help needed Quote: Originally Posted by durant7 Got them again on Sunday. Any suggestions for the rookie coach accepted? Hope to move on to touch sensor which brings in the switch logic next but I feel as though we have not exhausted the move/motor/bot engineering yet. Alas Nov 14th is around the corner. A PID algorithm is already built into the MOVE block. The MOTOR block has it too but it's implemented differently. Each has their strength depending on how you use them. I wasn't sure from your post if you are measuring the accuracy of distance or turning but either way I have a few suggestions for you to consider. 1. Your wheel diameters are likely different enough to cause the robot to drift to one side. Try changing sides and see if it drifts the other direction. BTW- drift isn't bad so long as it's consistent. If it's consistent then you can predictably compensate for it. But eliminate as many variables as you can first. 2. Check and see if the wheels are placed the same way on each axle. 3. Smaller wheels take more revolutions (motor degrees) to travel the same distance as larger wheels. More degrees = higher resolution. Smaller wheels should be more accurate than larger ones. 4. Have the team explore using a skid or roller vs. a swivel castor. 5. Have the team explore the differences between point turns and swing turns using MOVE and MOTOR blocks. 6. Explore the differences in accuracy with a wide wheel base vs. a narrow wheel base. 7. Explore accuracy in distance and turning where the center of gravity is shifted closer or farther away from the drive wheels. ========== You're doing a great job coach. Keep it up. Stay thirsty my friend. __________________ Cheers! got robot? -- FLL Team 280 Cat herding since 2008

Schedule for the tournament:

• Robot Match Schedule  pdf
• Judging Schedule  pdf
• Lakeland High School Campus Map  pdf
• Venue Layout Map  pdf
• Team Pit Map (ver. 2)   xls   pdf
• Tournament agenda  doc

Remember Millerbots 1 is team 1907. Millerbots 2 is team 10171.

Robotics Tips re Dead Reckoning

Let's review some basics again.  Here is a tip for dead reckoning using the two driving motors to go straight or turn.

"TEST YOUR MOTORS. Firmly mount your motors in a fixture and run them simultaneously with a Lego beam mounted like the minute hand on a clock. Place move blocks in a loop that rotate the motors in 1 degree increments in a full circle. If the motors are aligned, them the pointers will be aimed in the same position. Also try rotating the motors in 90 and 180 degree increments.

Pick the 2 that are the most closely aligned as your drive wheels. "


- quoated from "Coach David" in FLL Forum (post #10)
http://forums.usfirst.org/showthread.php?t=13137

Fantastic Four & Team 1/2 Awards

Our Mission Program Four is now FANTASTIC!
Check out the you tube video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huJ_-13qr7k

The link below are unlisted youtube videos of both teams of Millerbots being awarded at the ceremony.  (The videos are posted as unlisted youtube videos instead of attachment here as it offers better resolution for similar amount of uploading time.)
Champion's Award (and Creative Presentation Award)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjSHoMpOfFE

Robot Innovation and Strategy Award

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mE_vNH_cBns

We Are The Champions!

Normally I don't like Spongebob. My class will understand when I say I think he's too sassy. :)  But, I thought this video was funny...

Link: CONGRATULATIONS, MILLERBOTS!

Congrats to all of you! Good work!

p.s. I neglected to mention Henry's mom and the Uffords today in my thank yous. Henry's mom made the headbands for the kids, and the Ufford family organized the dinner at Buddy's. THANK YOU!

Map to Tournament and Buddy's

Hi all. The information about the tournament has been on the blog for a few weeks, but here it is again:

Allen Park Middle School, 8401 Vine, Allen Park, 48101  

Event Time:  8:00 - 4:00     

All students must be there by 8:30 a.m.

Concessions are available for lunch.

Attached you will find the competition Schedule.

Millerbots 1 (Bone Foam) is team 1907

Millerbots 2 (Leukemia) is team 10171

At 4:30 p.m. we are meeting at Buddy's Pizza in Dearborn for a banquet to celebrate our hard work.  The price includes Pizza (cheese or pepperoni), three types of salad, bread, and a soda or tea. Rebecca Hayes, Taylor's mom, will be collecting money at the BEGINNING of the meeting on Thursday. If you plan to attend the banquet, please bring cash. Thank you.

$15.00 -- Adults

$8.00 -- Children 10 and under

Link: Map to Tournament and Buddy's

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

There will be a cloze test on the below items Thursday at lunch recess. (Some key words will be deleted; students must fill in the blanks.) Cloze tests require the ability to understand context and vocabulary in order to identify the correct words or type of words that belong in the deleted passages of a text. The test is not a competition, and you will not receive a grade. You will take this test to show yourself and your teammates that you are serious about your team membership.

The judges are looking for:

n  There is BALANCE between Core Values, Research Project, and Robot. One is not more important than the others.

n  Team engages OTHERS in GENUINE enthusiasm and fun in a POSITIVE, fun way.

n  Team members can cite multiple SPECIFIC examples from everyday life for each of the core values (at school, at sports, at your place of worship).

n  There is a process for making decisions by members of the team.

n  Time management and role identification (Remember mission leaders were team members who took home the robot.)

n  STUDENT INITIATIVE (students identify what needs to be done and do it independently).

n  Balanced involvement and respect for ALL ideas from ALL members of the team.

n  ALL members are respectful to their teammates and other teams – even in the most difficult situations.

n  Gracious Professionalism is including all members of your team at all times, respecting your teammates and others, and cooperation.

(The judges will be looking for the above components in your team problem-solving session, as well as asking for evidence of these components from your team’s season.)

Be able to answer the following questions aloud: (Talk to your teammates at recess, on the bus, etc. if you need help.)

n  How is your robot able to withstand the rigors of competition without much repair?

n  How did your team streamline parts and need for changes during each heat?

n  Is your robot’s speed, force, and accuracy predictable?

n  Does your robot achieve its purpose every time?

n  Are your programs easy to follow for new team members? Can you explain them to others? Are your ideas easily teachable?

n  How/ why do you use jigs?

n  How did your team design multiple robots/appendage/program and then test, choose best option, and move forward?

n  How and why were the missions developed? How were the tasks grouped into missions?

n  What are the unique or unexpected (innovative) features of your robot or programming?

n  What are all of the Core Values of FLL?

n  How did your team incorporate the FLL Core Values in programming and mechanics?

Use ‘WE’, not ‘I’ or ‘Mr. Tseng’. J

Monday: We will make new posters and practice your presentation.

Tuesday: We practice a teamwork task and practice your presentation.

Wednesday: We practice a teamwork task and practice your presentation.

Thursday: Cloze Quiz on Judge’s Criteria and Verbal Quiz on Programming/ Mechanics.

Friday: Final rehearsal of your presentation and more judging practice.

A Cheesy Inspiration

Lazytown Teamwork Song

At the 26th second mark:

Teamwork. Do it together.
Millerbots. Team forever.
We're all for one.
And one for all.
We'll help each other stand tall.

Millerbots 2 Research (Help!) -- Know this

We need more research on Chemotherapy and Radiation: How do they help cure leukemia? How do they harm the body?

Our team researched the cutting-edge world of Biomedical Engineering to find out how nanobots might repair bone marrow in children with leukemia.  At the very beginning of this Robotics season, our team voted to research a topic having to do with the skeletal system.  One of our research searches led us to nanorobots  in medicine.  We’ll tell you more about that in a bit.  We also voted to write a song about our research.

The problem we identified is “How can Biomedical Engineering heal leukemia?”

To find out what doctors are currently doing to heal leukemia, we read books, scoured the internet and met with graduate students, David Lai and Dana Begun, from the University of Michigan Biomedical Engineering department.  We gathered lots of information. Bill Nye videos on the Skeletal System

Discovery Channel’s “How Will Nanobots Help Cure Cancer?”

The Incredible Human Body.  Directed by Karen Goodman and Kirk Simon.  National Geographic.  2002

Colombo, Luann. Uncover the Human Body. Bellevue Publishers Group, 2002.

Cox, Alexander. Body Science. New York: Ling, 2009.                    Ganeri, Anita. Body Basics: Bones. New York: ___, 2009.

Lindsay, Mary. The Visual Dictionary of the Human Body. New York: Kindersley, 1991.

Simon, Seymour. Bones: Our Skeletal System. New York: HarperCollins, 2000.

We learned about:

Bones

Ÿ  Bones function to move, support, and protect all of the organs in the body.

Ÿ  Bones contain fibers.

Ÿ  The largest bone in the body is the thigh bone, the Femur.

Bone Marrow

Bone marrow is a flexible tissue found in the hollow interior of the bones.  In the big bones of adults, the marrow produce blood cells.  Bone marrow also prevents the back flow of lymph, working as an important part of the lymphatic system.

Leukemia

Cancer of the blood is called leukemia.  About 90% of leukemia is diagnosed.  The word leukemia means white blood cells.  Most forms of leukemia are treated with pharmaceutical medications. Leukemia is cancer.

We learned about current treatments for leukemia and Nanorobotics:

Current treatments of leukemia

The best cure for leukemia is getting a bone marrow transplant.  Patients are given transplants so they can be given higher doses of a drug that helps fight leukemia.  If they don’t get transplants, they can’t have enough of the cure they need.  The drug destroys cancer cells but also destroys good cells and is harmful to your body.  The new marrow can make up the cells it lost.

Nanorobotics

Nanorobotics is an emerging field that deals with the controlled manipulation of objects with nanometer scale dimensions. 

Then we devised with Nan robots:

Our innovative solution is:

The use of nanobots to deliver healthy bone marrow to leukemia patients. The nanobots would also remove the damaged marrow from the bone.

The nanobots would be injected by a shot and travel through the bloodstream to complete their job. Then, the nanobots would travel to the vena cava where there would be a filter. From there, doctors would make a small cut and remove the nanobots.

These nanobots, themselves, are not expensive to make; they are simply small pieces of metal guided through the body by magnetic fields controlled by doctors.

Nanobot bone marrow repair is preferred over today’s surgery methods because it’s less painful, leaves no scars, less chance of infection or death, and chemotherapy kills cells all over the body – not just cancer cells. Nanobots are BETTER!

In addition to this solution, we sang the song that you just heard to the students at our school, to children at our local library, and people at the Walton Woods retirement community. There, people pledged to eat at least ten calcium-rich foods or drinks during the next week. Eating calcium-rich foods makes bones stronger, and strong bones are less likely to break.

<We at the hospital

Nanobots are movin

Through the blood… through through the blood>

Millerbots 1 Research (Know this)

Millerbots  Research (Titanium Bone Foam)

Our team researched the cutting-edge world of Biomedical Engineering to find out how surgeons repair badly broken bones. At the very beginning of this Robotics season, our team voted to research the topic having to do with the skeletal system. One of our earliest research searches led us to bone foam. We will tell you more about that in a moment. We also voted to write a song about our research.

The problem we identified is “How do surgeons repair badly broken bones?” We know that biomedical engineering goes back to ancient times. Archeologists in Egypt found a mummy with an artificial toe that is 3,000 years old. We also know that amputation (cutting and removing of a human appendage) was a widely used practice.

To find out what doctors are currently doing to repair badly broken bones, we read books, scoured the Internet, and met with graduates students from the University of Michigan Biomedical Engineering department David Lai and Dana Begun. We gathered a lot of information.

Videos:

Bill Nye  “Bones”

Skeleton. Directed by David Hutt. Eyewitness, 1994.

The Incredible Human Body. Directed by Karen Goodman and Kirk Simon. National Geographic, 2002.

Books:

Colombo, Luann. Uncover the Human Body. Bellevue Publishers Group, 2002.

Cox, Alexander. Body Science. New York: Ling, 2009.                

Ganeri, Anita. Body Basics: Bones. New York: ___, 2009.

Lindsay, Mary. The Visual Dictionary of the Human Body. New York: Kindersley, 1991.

Simon, Seymour. Bones: Our Skeletal System. New York: HarperCollins, 2000.

We Learned about Bones

            General:

1. Bones function to move, support, and protect all of the organs in the body.
2. Organs found on bones are marrow, endosteum, periosteum, nerves, blood vessels, and cartilage.
3. Bones contain fibers.
4. The largest bone in the body is the thigh bone, called the femur.
5. Calcification is the process by which calcium helps to strengthen bones.

Strength:

Bones are a compound material; the solid is calcium and the gel is collagen, which makes bones strong and lightweight. Bone strength is from vitamin D, calcium, and the physical activity you do.

To make bones strong, a person needs to have vitamin C, vitamin D, and physical activity. If you don’t have these things, your bones are not going to be very strong.

Osteoporosis. Osteoporosis is caused by poor bone density and can trigger disabilities caused by severely weakened bones like compression fractures of the spine and hip fractures. Some treatments you can get to resolve or lessen the impact of osteoporosis are parathyroid hormone, calcitonin, and taloxifene. There are no early symptoms that you can identify for osteoporosis.

Types of Breaks

There are four main types of bone breaks: displaced, nondisplaced, open, and closed. In a displaced bone break, the bones break into more than two pieces. In a nondisplaced break, the bone breaks all the way through or cracks either part of the bone, but it does not move and it maintains its alignment. In an open break, the bone comes through the skin. In a closed break, the bone stays inside the skin.

            We learned about titanium bone foam and other ways doctors are currently repairing badly broken bones.

Bone Foam: What Is It?

Germany’s Fraunhofer Research Group made a bone-replacing material called resabone, then they made something better called titanium foam (bone foam). Bone foam is like a metal sponge. Recent bone foam was invented by Afsaneh Rabiei of North Carolina State University. Bone foam is the bones’ “favorite” kind of replacement.

Titanium bone foam helps bodies heal after traumatic injuries and bone breaks.

Other Ways Doctors Fix Bones

There are many ways a doctor can heal a broken bone. One way is a cast. A cast keeps the bones held together until the bone heals itself.

           

            We also researched nanorobotics. Nanorobotics is an emerging field that deals with the controlled manipulation of objects with nanometer scale dimensions.

            Then we devised this new adaptation of bone foam delivery with nanorobots. Our innovative solution is:

The use of nanobots to deliver titanium bone foam to patients with traumatic bone breaks.

The nanobots, loaded with molecules of titanium bone foam, would be injected by a shot and travel through the bloodstream to complete their job. Then, the nanobots would travel to the capillaries in the small intestine, where the bad marrow and nanobots would “get in line” to be excreted.

These nanobots, themselves, are not expensive to make; they are simply small pieces of metal guided through the body by magnetic fields controlled by doctors.

Nanobot bone marrow repair is preferred over today’s surgery methods because it’s less painful, leaves no scars, less chance of infection or death, and chemotherapy kills cells all over the body – not just cancer cells. Nanobots are BETTER!

In addition to this solution, we sang the song that you just heard to the students at our school, to children at our local library, and people at the Walton Woods retirement community. There, people pledged to eat at least ten calcium-rich foods or drinks during the next week. Eating calcium-rich foods makes bones stronger, and strong bones are less likely to break.

<I eat good food because I want strong bones

But if they break

How to they make       new bones?

Nanobots are shot with new bone foam

I’ll keep my real bones

I’ll take my Flintstones>

Picture Assignments

 Here are the assignments for the pictures needed for our presentations.

n  These pictures are due in the Robotics basket outside of room E-4 on Monday, November 8 at 8:00 a.m.

n  Research the topic for your picture. Look on the Internet, in books, etc. Use good resources. Do the best job you can with the limited description below.

n  Your picture should be large and cover most of the space on a white 8.5x11 inch piece of paper.

n  Color your picture NEATLY with colored pencil.

n  Outline any pencil marks with black fine-line marker such as super-fine sharpie or a flair pen.

n  Label as much of your drawing as possible with YOUR NEATEST handwriting, parallel to the bottom of the page edge.

n  Give your picture a large, bold title.

n  Write your name in light pencil ON THE BACK.

Salik	Labeled (20 common bones) Skeleton
Kyle	Labeled diagram of the bone (layers, marrow, etc.)
Sonia	Nanorobotics
Nithika	Labeled diagram of the digestive system
Nicholas E.	Labeled (20 common bones) Skeleton
Luke	Labeled diagram of the bone (layers, marrow, etc.)
Nick H	Labeled diagram of Osteoporosis
Sabriya	Labeled diagrams of the four main types of bone breaks: displaced, non-displaced, open, closed.
Hrithik	Bone Foam
Sydney	Nanorobots
Shreya	Labeled diagram of Osteoporosis
Varun	Nanobot
Chintan	Nanobot
Shilpa	Bone Foam
Henry	Skeleton
Katharine	Labeled diagram of the bone (layers, marrow, etc.)
Manasi	Nanorobotics
Nathan T.	Labeled diagram of the digestive system
Taylor	Skeleton
Vishrudh	Labeled diagram of the bone (layers, marrow, etc.)
Nelson	Labeled diagram of Osteoporosis
Ryan	Labeled diagrams of the four main types of bone breaks: displaced, non-displaced, open, closed.
Austin	Bone Foam
Laurence	Nanorobots
Nathan Y.	Labeled diagram of Osteoporosis
Josh	Nanobot