Pre-Season #1 Feb 25, 2023
State Competition Recap & More 

We decided we declare the post-competition season as pre-season for the 2023/2024 league. Here are our achievements for today:

New Format - Team Session Leader

• • Each session will now have a session leader from the team who will present the agenda for the day. Larry was the first to go and did a great job!

Tournament Score Review

• • The team was tasked to  review the four areas of the competition 

1. Robot Design

2. Core Values

3. Robot Game

4. Innovation Project

• FLL Judging is great at giving detailed feedback. As homework, each team member was assigned one of the areas to review scores and present their thoughts.

• Everybody gave their feedback what they think went well, and where we can improve

Base Robot

Coach Will lead the discussion about our base robot. Some of the feedback we helped guide the kids on figuring out what could be done better in particular:

• • The dog gears were difficult to line up - the team decided to move to 16-teeth gear instead

  • Drive faster - discussion around speed versus accuracy. The team will be tasked in the coding session to develop an acceleration algorithm

  • Using distance in EV3 is a problem - if the code uses distance and hits a wall, the robot gets stuck on the wall until he figures out that he can't reach the distance. Team solution - use distance + time, or use a touch sensor.

  • Center of Gravity - Coach Will taught the team about the concept of the "center of gravity" and had the kids assess the current base robot. The team learned about the shortcoming of the current robot with the center of gravity in the back rather than in the center. 

HighBlocks goes ReBrickable!

Coach Will uploaded the final design of the 2022/2023 HighBlocks FLL base robot with step-by-step build instructions to Rebrickable.com. Check it out and feel free to re-use for your own robot https://rebrickable.com/users/TeamHighBlocks/mocs/

Ideas for Pre-Season Learnings

Team was tasked to brainstorm how to use the pre-season time. Here are the ideas:

• Presentation Practice

• Build GBC modules in Lego (we all agreed it does not have anything to do with the FLL challenge but is an excellent exercise in design and building)

• Build attachments for the two challenges of the past season we did not do yet

• Use the line sensor

• Coding practice - recode robot from scratch

• Learn Python

• Learn how to use Stud.io to build our own Lego plans

• Document our innovation project father

• Research what other teams did well