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We had a very interesting BrickHeap Wars competition at our September meeting.
Following the meeting we voted on our mini-challenge for the October meeting
which will take place in two weeks, on October 26th. The meeting runs from
2-5pm, and we'll be meeting in the Gibran room.
The mini-challenge we picked was "Candy Bot". Build a robot that somehow makes
use of candy. Use your imagination. Robots are not limited to these ideas, but
you might do things like give candy away (it's Halloween soon after the meeting)
or sell it. Perhaps they can throw it, or if you can figure out how to, you
might use the candy as a power source.
Hope to see you soon!
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David Schilling
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We had a great second-chance sumo competition at our May SMART meeting. We voted
on building a Space Elevator ribbon climbing robot for our June meeting. The
June meeting will be on the 29th, in the Michelangelo room.
Build a robot that can climb a ribbon. The ribbon I'll be bringing is a 3" wide
woven nylon "Caution" tape that I bought at Home Depot. If you want to get some
of your own, you can get it for under $20. Look for 500’ Heavy Duty Reinforced
Caution Tape", Empire manufacturer, SKU 719-282, usually in the tool aisle at
Home Depot.
The motivation for this is that there are two space elevator competitions coming
up this summer. For the mini-challenge, anything that can climb a ribbon is
great. If you want to see the rules for the competition, you can find them at
http://www.isec.org/sec/index.php/family-science-fest.
See you at the next meeting!
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David Schilling
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We had a great meeting in March with more robots than we've seen in a while. The
challenge was to build a sorting robot, and there were a couple of really good
ones! I was very impressed with what people came up with.
This month’s mini-challenge is to build a sumo robot. The distinguishing feature
this time is it will be 3-way sumo. That is, there will be three robots on the
ring at the same time.
Our build rules (since it’s a competition, and not entirely free build) is that
robots must weigh under 3 pounds, and may not be larger than 12”x12” at any
time. They must be built entirely out of LEGO using standard building
techniques, and you may not intentionally damage an opponent.
The arena will have a white surface with a narrow black rim. I think Mark said
his arena is a 4’ wide octagon.
That’s it. Have fun!
Mark Kenworthy will be running the meeting as I'll be out of town.
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David Schilling
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The mini-challenge for the next SMART meeting, to take place at 2pm on March
30th, at Digipen as usual, and back in the Michelangelo auditorium, is to build
a sorting robot.
You can chose which item to sort, and whatever sorting criteria you like.
Sorting by size or colour are two obvious choices. Also sorting LEGO bricks or
other pieces are obvious choices. But who says you have to pick obvious choices?
I had a conversation with someone that you could sort by smell if you wanted.
Don't have a clean t-shirt? Send your robot to the laundry pile to pick out the
least smelly shirt for you to wear today. (Or you could just do the laundry.
Ever think of that?)
Have fun! Hope to see you at the next meeting!
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David Schilling
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We had a great meeting today! Seven teams showed up for the Build On The Spot
competition. I guess it was harder than it seemed, but everyone had a robot,
even if they didn't score too consistently.
FOUR teams tied for first place! Great job, everyone!
For next month, we'll be meeting in the same room we were in today. The
mini-challenge we voted on was to build a "Facilities Robot", a very open ended
challenge. The idea is to build a robot that you would see in some large
institution. It can be anything. A mail delivery robot, a floor cleaning robot,
a robot that runs the elevators, a robot that opens doors, a robot that serves
meals, or makes beds (if it was a hospital, for instance), a robot that takes
out the trash, whatever you can think of. Have some fun with this one.
We'll see you on February 23rd.
PS: If someone accidentally left with one of the cubes I built for today's
challenge, could you contact me directly? (Don't forget to remove the spam bot
from the email address.) I'll arrange a time to come pick it up. Thanks!
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David Schilling
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