Caroline and Robots
Posted By Kathleen David on February 6, 2016
For the past twelve weeks Caroline has been part of a team that participated in a local FLL (First Lego League) tournament. She and the other girls have been working hard at learning all kinds of things including programing the robot and building solutions to various problems and tasks to get ready for the challenges of the competition.
This was supposes to happen two weeks ago but the large snowstorm brought the Island to a halt. Then we had the storm yesterday that dumped about eight inches out of nowhere but, given the conditions, we were told it was on.
They did very well and won a judge’s award for their overall presentation and team-work. For a first time team, they did better than expected.
The robot decided that it had a mind of its own and that was a bit of consternation for the team but they worked through the problems and tried to figure out how to fix the problems on the fly. They did well under pressure and kept moving forward.
I am very proud of her and her team. It is a great group of very intelligent young ladies who are going to do great things one day. She had a lot of fun making new friends and feeling good about being smart.
Plus she got to build things with Legos that they attached to the robot that they programmed. I am a little jealous of all she did but glad that she did it.
My thanks to her coaches and her mentor and the other parents for their time and effort to teach the girls new skills and give them a fun experience.
I am grateful that Caroline had this opportunity.
That is awesome. I always liked robotics and automation. I tried enrolling in college on those classes (digital control, robotics, linear systems) but they always filled up during the first hour of registration. I took the electromagnetic and antenna classes instead because nobody wanted to take them so there was always spaces available.
A few weeks ago my son went to a competition were he had to use legos to make something related to the construction industry, architecture and civil engineering. He got third place for his grade (1st) and he was crying on the way home because he wasn’t first.I told him third place is nothing to be ashamed of. Also I told him I went to see the first places on all grades and it looks like the reason he did not win was that even though he had a great idea (he even had solar panels to make his project “green”) and his explanation was great, without the explanation you would not know what the project was. I hope I was able to teach him to look at what he did compared to the winners and learn and adapt for next year.