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Igutech built a giant iguana! I suppose you are wondering why? On March 10th the Igutech team competed in a cardboard box derby hosted by Bear Creek Ski Mountain. In this competition, we had to make a well designed sled (in our case, an iguana) using only cardboard, zip ties, duct tape, and paint to add details. We met on a  Saturday afternoon and spent hours building the cardboard iguana. We had our hearts set on winning! When we arrived, we saw many other cool yet intimidating sleds. Would our sled go fast? We wouldn’t know the answer until the first run. The rules of the race where simple: the first sled down to the bottom of the tubing hill would win!

After carrying the large iguana to the top of the hill, we  patiently waited our turn. Once it was our turn to race, we already had our adrenaline pumping! We were speeding
down the hill at an amazing rate until we hit the wall, literally, and lost our momentum. Although, we didn’t win the competition, we had a great time participating in the event. Just wait until next time!

On March 10, 2011, we the Igutechs went to Bear Creek Ski Resort to participate in the Cardboard box derby.  You might be wondering what this is, right? Well, you have to build and decorate a box that would be capable of racing down a snow tubing area to win a race. So, we went to Cole’s (somebody on our team) house to work on the box. Once we had the box painted, it looked like a very long iguana! We could fit 8 people on that thing! So, we went to Bear Creek, checked in, and then, we went up the lift with our iguana. When it was our turn to race, we pulled it up. 3, 2, 1, BEEP!! We sped down the hill very fast, and we were accelerating at a very fast rate.  We lost though.  Next run was even better. 3, 2, 1, BEEP!!  We sped down the hill… and smashed into the hump that separates the lanes. Our box got torn up, and it was crazy! We cut off the head of the iguana, and hung it up in the Igutech Home Base. It was so fun, and you should really participate in it next year.

Tips for a succsessful robot
(mostly for new FLL teams):

• Use MyBlocks to save memory. The NXT dosen’t have that much memory and it runs out very quickly. We also found that MyBlocks help a lot to organize the programs. Otherwise, it becomes very difficult to tweak the robot missions if the code gets too long.
  
• Make sure that robot is robust. Lots of “L”-shaped technic beams and many, many pegs always helped us to stiffen the robot chassis.
• Use lots of (light + rotation) sensors to navigate on the field. It is tempting not to and it might speed up programming in the short run but in the end we always went back to adding more sensors for more consistent navigation
  
• Test robot in different conditions (exp: tilt table, slightly move mat, change lighting conditions,…)
• Make your own light sensor calibration program. If you don’t calibrate the light sensors, the difference between black and white on the playing field can become very small and inconsistent.
  
• Make sure your robot starts accurately and consistently.
  
• Make your attachments so they can only be attached one way. When under pressure during a tournament it is more difficult then it seems to get the attachment on correctly…
  
• Practice your routine lots of times. It takes a suprising amount of time to change the attachments, load and unload mission pieces and select the next program between robot missions.
  
• Although we often tried, we found no good use for the ultrasonic sensor in any of the robot missions. It just wasn’t consistent enough and easily fooled by, for example, small ojects and angled surfaces. We are curious to hear about your experience. Drop us a note at info at igutech.org
  
• Do (gentle) robot drop tests from a few inches to test robustness!
  

-Tilman

Tips for a succsessful project:

• We always liked the “skit” format with every team member participating. We found powerpoint presentations often don’t look that good in the cramped judging rooms and we always made up poster boards insteads.
  
• Practice lots to get the timing right. You don’t wnat be be cut off by the judges before you can present your innovative solution…
  
• Speak loudly and clearly
• You might not want a “Script”,you could just talk freely with bullets on a notecard. Talking freely is more liked by judges!
• We always used posters that were held by one of the team members to assist our speakers
• Make the judges know who is what role (i.e: Bob is the Scientist)
• Think about good anwers to questions like “how did you come up with the project idea?”
  
• Have fun!

You can also watch our presentation from past seasons on You tube!

CAMPING & CANOING

[Sept 20-21, 2014; The Unknown IguTecher] 

What happened on the river, stays on the river.    

 

OUR DAY AT DA VINCI

[Sept 12, 2014; Joshua]   

Friday, September 12th, 2014 at 5:00pm the Igutech teams from Schnecksville and Bethlehem were at the Da Vinci Science Center in Lehigh Valley to learn about a project they have been working on. They were trying to figure out how they could improve the way someone learns something. They arrived and a Science Center instructor told us to go to a room on the second floor. There were tables neatly set up in two rows. The instructor told us to sit in groups of three. First, she gave us little wind-up toys and a sheet of paper with questions about the toy on it.

We were told to observe the toy and answer the questions on the paper. Then the instructor took back the toys and the paper. Then she gave everyone a folder. Two of the people at the table had blank paper on it and they were titled “students”. The other person had a drawing taped to the inside of the folder and that person was titled “teacher”. Then the instructor told the “teacher” to describe the picture to the “students”, and they had to draw an identical picture to the one the “teacher” had.

We had three rounds so each person could have a turn to be a “teacher” once. After the three rounds, the instructor collected back the folders. Then a pizza and bevereges arrived ordered by Coach Gunther and we had a short break for refreshments. Then we all left to go over to Coach Harald’s house. We started to build and find programs for the robot. Then we all had a meeting of what we would do Sunday. We all had jolly good fun.

 

GO ROBOT GO!

[Sept 7, 2014; Connor]   

Today, we did programing and talked about ideas for attachments. We programmed the robot to go to a blue line, turn and continue to the next blue line. We also used the touch sensor and had the robots make different sounds. We worked on building attachments for the robot. We talked about our project topics.

 

TEAM BUILDING vs. ROBOT BUILDING

[Sept 5, 2014; Adrian]   

On Sunday, we started the meeting with a group programming a simple program and a group designing possible attachments while Sahas and I were designing the calendar. Then everyone stopped and we started a team-building activity. We had to make an iguana out of lots of materials. It has hard to decide what to use. We didn’t get very far but, it was only practice. Then we discussed some things about the project and narrowed down a couple of topics. Then the meeting was over.

 

TACKLING THE OBSTACLE COURSE

[Aug 29, 2014; Sahas]    

This week we were each assigned one obstacle on the course to explain, so we started out doing that. Once we finished with the obstacle explanations we talked a little about how we could overcome them. The time went so fast, I couldn’t believe the meeting was half over! After that we gathered outside for a little fun and a delicious snack of bite cup cakes. We had to return to work soon after the snack as time was going by fast. We discussed what things we want to learn, and listed them on the white board. Finally we talked about how we could learn those things. The meeting was great, it made 2 1/2 hours feel like 1 hour.

 

T H E   S U M O B O T    C H A L L E N G E

[Aug 23, 2014; Aiden]    

Hi this is Aiden. I’m writing the blog for sumo bots.   I had a lot of fun last Igutech building my sumobot even though I didn’t win. I liked getting to know some of my other team members while working on my robot. It was a new experience for me because it is my first year doing Igutech.  I’m excited to learn how to program robots.  I had a lot of fun creating my own robot. Watching the robots battle was definitely the best part. It was interesting looking at the different designs people made. The more experienced team member showed me tips on how to build the robots.

 

IGUTECH NORTH : 2014 TEAM ASSEMBLY 

[Aug 22, 2014; Andrew]    

Tonight was our first team meeting of the season.  We spent most of the night assembling the new robotics field for the upcoming season which looked interesting yet challenging.  Towards the end we did a little team building activitie where we were each giving two small objects and had to create a story using the items we got in under 5 minutes.

 GE

 

 

[May 2012] Team Igutech was invited to the North America Open FLL Tournament at the Legoland Resort in California. They competed with 64 State Championship and runner-up teams from the United States, Canada and Mexico.

 

 

[Mar. 17 2012; Kevin] On March 10, 2011, we the Igutechs went to Bear Creek Ski Resort to participate in the Cardboard box derby. You might be wondering what this is, right? Well, you have to build and decorate a box that would be capable of racing down a snow tubing area to win a race. So, we went to Cole’s (somebody on our team) house to work on the box. Once we had the box painted, it looked like a very long iguana! We could fit 8 people on that thing! So, we went to Bear Creek, checked in, and then, we went up the lift with our iguana. When it was our turn to race, we pulled it up. 3, 2, 1, BEEP!! We sped down the hill very fast, and we were accelerating at a very fast rate. We lost though. Next run was even better. 3, 2, 1, BEEP!! We sped down the hill… and smashed into the hump that separates the lanes. Our box got torn up, and it was crazy! We cut off the head of the iguana, and hung it up in our Igutech Home Base. It was so fun, and you should really participate in it next year.

[Feb. 24, 2012; Henrik] Lately we went to the regional compition and we had massive fun. We did the “IguTech Challange” where we, the team members, split up into teams of a 5 Teams and had to interview, question and learn about their team and what they do. So for every team the your team interviews, you get 10 points which where kept track on a score board. It ended up as a really close call when we ran out of teams to interview! Well, anyway, back to the serious stuff. We did great on the teamwork and project parts. We didnt do so hot on the robot runs, at home it always works better. In the end we still got 2^nd place! But even better that 1st place is that we are going to LEGO LAND CALIFORNIA!!!

 

[Sept 30, 2011; Kevin] We had a very productive team meeting last night. We had a very yummy dinner together. Then we horsed around a bit, but after those few minutes of goofiness, it was down to business. The programming team is working on getting a few missions accomplished and the building team is working on finishing up the “universal attachment system”. Our team came up with a lot of really cool project ideas, and we are all excited that we have decided on our project topic. Sorry, we can’t tell you about it yet! We have been a very busy team!
Thanks, Kevin

[Sep. 10. 2011; Tilman] Hello and welcome to a brand new season of Igutech! The Food Factor challenge was recently released and we are already hard at work by building our robot and coming up with and idea for a project. This year it seems that the missions are harder that the year before because you have to transport lots of objects. We will also try to, in the near future, expand our website to include more content, right now there are only some recorces. I think that we have a good start to this year, but we have to keep on working hard!

-Tilman

————————————–[ COMPETITION ]————————————————-

[Oct. 22; Jon]This is Dr. Lorraine Spikol, Associate Chief, Lehigh Neurology. She talked to us about what happens when the axon dies and what happens to the brain. Also she told us about different ideas researchers came up with to help stop MS.

 

[Coach Harald] Thank you again Dr. Spikol for taking the time to talk to us about your field of neurology at our team meeting. This was very informative and inspirational! Dr. Spikol started out with an overview of the central nervous system and then adressed nerve damage related to Multiple Sclerosis (MS). We had the opportunity to ask the expert many questions about nerve fibers and their protective sheath (myelin) and what happens to these myeliin sheaths during an MS attack. Although there is no cure (yet) for MS, there are a number of treatment options – the latest being the first oral pill. Dr. Spikol explained to us how the different treatments work and she gave us some fresh ideas related to our research project.

 

[Oct. 15, Henrik] On October 15, the Igutech team had a meeting and we decided to use the theme ‘xxx’ (sorry, can’t reveal any details yet) for our project. Everybody has their rolls too. We still have one robot and not two or or more. The programming team is fixing our PID program. We had a BLAST listening to Dynamite! We are planing a movie night tonight after the meeting. The building team is working on attachments for pushing down the syringe. This was a very good and successful meeting. We got things done in every subject (Building, programming, and project)

[Oct 6; Jackie] On October 1st, Igutech got together for a meeting. We had a guest speaker from Parkland High School come talk to us about nerves and a little bit of ^(classified). Also, earlier that week Igutech had a fun Switcheroo Day. Switcheroo Day is where everybody switched roles to understand the importance of each others jobs. We learned to appreciate eachother for what they contribute to the team. Igutech is on there way to success!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 🙂

[Sept. 17; Jackie] On Friday September 17th, Team Igutech met for a very pro-ductive team meeting. It all started when we all had a fun vocabulary game. If you got a question right you got candy. Then we quickly went over the task calendar to determine what we need to get done. Next, everybody got to work at their station. The programming team started working on expedition #1. The building team got a great start on two robots and the cage for the robots. The project team narrowed down to three main topics. Birth defects, loss of vision, and nerve damage. Now they just have to go into detail on each topic. After that, the team ate delicious Papa John’s pizza. Then the team played there genius new game Fox-tail Football*. Everybody had so much fun and now we are all obsessed with the game. Overall, this meeting was a huge accomplishment – at this rate, Igutech is bound for success.
* invented by the Igutechs in Sept 2010

[Sept 3, 2010; Jackie] On September 3rd Igutech had a meeting to discuss the new season of FLL: biomedical engineering. First, we discussed the new missions on the new playing field. Everybody was assigned 2-4 missions.They each had to descr ibe the missions they were assigned to. Then the Igutech’s were treated t o ” slippery” treat, spaghetti. Almost three people’s spaghetti took a wipe out. After hat they got straight back to work. The building crew started to make attachments for the NEW robot. The programming team started to figure out what missions we would accomplish first , and how we would execute them.Overall the meeting was a success.

 

[Aug 6, 2010; Sydney] Dear I gu Journal,
Today we are missing Jackie, Ferdi, Henrik, and Jon so that makes me the only girl. This is the first day I wrote in the Igu Journal and I am the first to write in it. Our future Igutech member Adrian just made a cool attachment for his awesome robot. Justin is working on programing and Stewart is working on our robot. Tilman is working on the program and he’s calibrating a robot for me to program he is great at multitasking. Now it’s time for lunch…we had tacos then we played with Tilman’s zip-line and Stewart almost fell off. Tilman is finished with calibrating the robot… now I’m going go to learn how program. I just successfully finished my first mission.
GOOD BYE

 

What you see above is our ‘PID’ programming code for a LEGO robot following a line. It follows lines so smoothly that you can’t even see it wobbling. The P in the PID is just a basic line follower, the I looks at the past and uses those numbers to make it smoother. The coolest one is the D which looks for patterns to predict the future readings. To make it, we had to use a lot of variables and constants in our program. We were amazed when we tested it and it worked because most of the time we had to trouble-shoot our program. As you can see, it is very long so when we finished it we made it into a “my block”.