Upcoming Event: MS Final Challenge!

In the Providence Middle School, fourteen 7th and 8th Graders are working busily on their capstone project for the semester: the Intro to Engineering Final Challenge! Every semester, the students in this elective are given a game-style challenge to complete, which involves designing, building, and programming a robot using LEGO Mindstorms EV3 sets.

This semester's challenge is being played out on a large elevated plywood platform, 8 ft by 8 ft. Mr Meadth spent a happy few hours putting this together in the science lab.

Each team of two students must create a robot that can sweep the platform clear of various pieces of coloured "debris"; imagine a small robot whose task is to permanently keep a rooftop helipad clear of windblown trash. Two robots are running in each round simultaneously, and whoever pushes off the most debris wins.

Special note: the pieces of "debris" we are using are the game pieces designed by Eva last year for her high school Educational Design project! Naturally, they are printed on our mod-T printers, which are still running strong (and now only $299 on their website!).

There are significant challenges associated with this project. How do you keep the robot from falling off the edge of the platform? How do you actually have the robot find the scattered debris? Does it run a blind search pattern, or does it try to use sensors to actively search? What kind of locomotive means does it use? Tracks or wheels or something else? What if it bumps into another robot?

Let's introduce our competitors this semester:

Isabela and Lily with their wheeled wonder--note the absence of rubber tires

on the front wheels to allow sideways slippage when turning

Christine and Sofi with their light and fast Pretzel Bot

James and Dylan with an imposing bulldozer--note the ultrasonic sensor on the

front to look for debris

Zach and Alan also went with a tracked design, and a large superstructure on

top for style points!

Ma.kaha and Cameron put their colour sensor way out in front to detect the edge

of the table--not falling off the table is critical to success!

Asher and Sam have an armoured design that looks just plain scary

Masato and Isaiah did some late redesign work to try to bring down their weight--

the robot with a lower weight gets the advantage of being placed first

The students will be presenting their completed designs to the rest of the class this Friday. The actual competition will take place in the Boys & Girls Club gymnasium on Monday and Tuesday at 1:00 during regular class time. Parents and friends are welcome, and it promises to be a lot of high energy fun!