FLL City Shaper: The Single-Motor Challenge! скачать в хорошем качестве

FLL City Shaper: The Single-Motor Challenge!

Every year a new FLL challenge allows the opportunity to design and program a custom robot to tackle the missions for that season. As part of that process, I always look to see which missions can be accomplished in a straight line or an arc. This frees up a motor to do missions (even more important when using an NXT, since it only has three motor ports). This year I concluded that every mission was theoretically possible using a straight-line robot, the first time I’ve ever seen such a possibility. Next, I look at how each mission might be accomplished without using an accessory motor. Surprisingly, every single mission can be accomplished without using an additional motor this year! The biggest challenge in this regard is raising the tower but there are ways around that, and I offer one possibility. The new rule separating the launch area from base was problematic for missions requiring a launch to the north. I could have let the bot go straight back and incur a touch penalty when it didn’t get into home, but I didn’t want to incur any unnecessary penalties, so a solution was devised. And the big challenge: turning to go up the bridge. The turn needed to be more precise than I could expect from a friction device, so I had to think about it for a few days. UPDATE (11/3/19): A single-motor RCX-based robot is working on the City Shaper mission set. Same concept but smaller, programmed using robotc on an old laptop that will still talk to the IR tower. I am learning robotc as I go, but there is [free] legacy software and firmware online with enough documentation and example programs to figure out the syntax. It isn't very hard to program a single-motor robot! And a big thanks to the Juneau Economic Development Council, which runs the FIRST programs in Alaska. I have most of their NXTs on semi-permanent loan and use them in after school programs (everybody else wants EV3s and never ask for the older machines), and when my RCX failed to talk to the IR tower they loaned me their RCX inventory too.