Robotics

This is my second attempt at posting this entry. The first time after having spent fifteen minutes typing it one handed while baby K was nursing, he kicked it and I lost the whole dang thing. 

A week later I will try again. This time he is in  my lap sleeping so we may avoid the kick.

Michael was on a Lego robotics team this year. He seemed to switch between moments of loving it and moments of hating it depending on the day. I think we have narrowed it down to a few factors but they are out of our control and he over all wants to stay on the team. I laugh at those who say girls are indecisive!

 

The mat and challenges this year revolved around the Human body.  The boys came up with this robot which I thought performed the tasks amazingly well.

along with building a programming a robot they also have to think of a problem in today's society that is related to the subject of Human body and try to come up with a solution.  The boys went with robotic arms for people who have lost function of their arms and came up with an arm that would be controlled by a helmet apparatus that would relay information from the brain to the robotic arm.  all in all a really good start for a couple of 11-13 yr old kids.

for the first part of competition they explain their research project to the judges and show the judges the robot and explain why they choose the design that they did.

they then compete their robots in three different rounds of competition and are judged on how many tasks the robot was able to successfully complete using their programming.

after the first two rounds they were #1 and ended the competition #3 out of 27.

Love how in this picture our friends daughter is covering Matt’s eyes with her hands.

Kudos goes to whoever this judge was. He was the most entertaining and enthusiastic judge I have ever seen!  He even had a dance off competition with a few of the boys as they were cleaning up.  It’s guys like this that makes a mommas heart smile.