In April, the Coding GOATS represented Iowa in the FIRST LEGO League Festival at the FIRST World Championship in Houston, TX. Ahead of their trip, we asked them a few questions about their season this year.
Q: How did your team come up with its name and logo?
A: We have used this name and logo for 3 years now. We were pretty sure we were the greatest of all time when we named ourselves.
Q: What was the most exciting part of being on your FIRST LEGO League team?
A: We all really enjoy being together and have lots of fun doing all the parts of FLL. And we really like getting to build the obstacles and finding out how to activate them.
Q: What was the funniest mishap that happened during a practice session?
A: We were taking a brain break and jumping on a trampoline and it started to rip and then collapsed along the side and almost fell with us on it.
Q: Can your team share a memorable moment from a competition?
A: At our qualifier, we were grabbing our attachments to head to the opening ceremony, and then our first robot table run. We realized we didn’t have the long stick attachment that we use to push the rolling camera. One of our dads drove to where we meet to try to get it, and our mentor drove to his house to get a similar piece by taking apart his own LEGO build. They both arrive back minutes before our first run. Lesson learned: check the packing list twice.
At state, we were doing the inspection for one of our robot runs, and we barely fit it in. The referee even got out a ruler to check that we were in the needed boundaries.
Q: What was the craziest idea your team came up with during brainstorming sessions?
A: We came up with our arm for the light show when a team member was just messing with the obstacles and found out you can spin the top of the light show to move it up and score points, so we created a spider-like arm that will spin the top of the light show which is very accurate and consistent.
Although we finally decided on our Position Perfecter for our final product, we came up with some pretty wild ideas along the way. One of the crazy ideas our team thought up was gloves for disabled people, allowing a robot to create art according to the person’s actions. Another idea we had was touch-reactive sensors that would attach to instruments in order to simplify online music lessons. Our team is really happy with our Posture Perfecter.
Q: Did you face any challenges this season? If so, how did you overcome them?
A: Over the season, we had a few issues. Many of those came from our project prototype, the Position Perfecter. Our first prototype, the large and bulky EV3, was very hard to attach to instruments. We soon innovated our idea and changed to the much smaller Micro:Bit microcontroller. When we changed our tilt sensor from the Ev3 to the Micro:bit. This was a challenge because we had to figure out how to get a case on the Micro:bit before we could start making our video or doing trials with it. That led us to taking a CAD class and designing our own case, which took two whole weeks! But the final product was worth all of that time.
We also have had problems with our robot table. The biggest problem we encountered was when our robot would be inaccurate during our runs. To prevent this problem, we have used the internal gyro of the robot to keep the robot in the right position on the table. We have also used manual alignment, such as lining our robot up with the walls, to help solve our problem. We have worked through these problems and many more and, because of them, we are a much stronger team.
Q: What was the most valuable lesson your team learned from your LEGO League experience?
A: The most valuable lesson that we learned was mistakes aren’t setbacks; they help you improve. Example: Every time we encountered a problem in our robot design, it felt like we were wasting time in fixing it. But we were actually making our robot better each time!
Q: Which mission did your team find the most interesting, and why?
A: Our team has found all the missions this season fun and interesting, but the most interesting one has to be Light Show. We have attempted many different attachments for this mission and looked at it many different ways. The reason that we have found it the most intriguing is the way we approach it. Instead of lifting up the lever, we spin the top of it, which is not only successful but very fun to watch in action. Sound mixer is also a fun and challenging mission for us. Our team built an incredible attachment for this mission that accomplishes it very simply.
Q: Which mission did your team find the most challenging, and how did you tackle it?
A: We have encountered some challenges this year that we spent a lot of hard work overcoming. Our team persevered and managed to fix them. Probably the most challenging mission this season has been Light Show. While it is definitely a fun mission, we have had our issues with it. We tackled it by brainstorming and trying many different approaches. On every single attachment, we studied the problem and tried to improve. Our coding also changed and developed, and we tried to make it as accurate as possible by backing up against the wall the get our robot straight again. Another difficult mission for us this year has been Rolling Camera. We took a similar approach as Light Show and looked at it different ways. Our code stayed consistent, however, with many changes in attachments. The challenges that we have encountered this year have been frustrating at times, but ultimately helped us grow and gave us more time to spend together as a team.
Q: What is your team most looking forward to at your upcoming competition?
A: We are looking forward to a lot of things at our upcoming World Competition. When we traveled to Arkansas last year for the Razorback Invitational, we learned a lot and grew as a team. Our team has similar expectations for this competition. There is definitely excitement about the fact that we can celebrate our accomplishments and acknowledge that we made it to the next level. Designing our pit and showing our Iowa flair are all things that we are eagerly awaiting as well.
This is Part I of a series on the teams that will represent Iowa in post-season FIRST LEGO League Events around the world.