Blackfoot Morning News - Robots teaching students teamwork

BLACKFOOT — After a successful weekend competing in the Lego League Invitational, the students at MVMS are taking what they learned from the competition and making improvements to their robots.

Morning News - Tagen Towsley
Team Flying Monkeys — Kate Wheeler, Cooper Despain, Michaela Fundum, Holly Gundersen, Logan Eskelsen, Benji Bigler and Stephen Hong evaluate what improvements they would like to make on their robot before the next competition. The Flying Monkeys team is from Blackfoot Sixth Grade School, and won second place in Division II for robot design.

Each team member has assigned duties to help build the robot, and program it to operate.
The Flying Monkeys team has students that are programmers, researchers, builders and testers.
Part of the robot competition is to teach the students how to work together in teams, and to research how their robots can accomplish certain tasks in a structured environment.
The Flying Monkeys team picked Cooper Despain to be the main programmer because he is good with computers and understands the program they use the best.
   “We thought our robot was really good, but we did bad compared to a lot of the other ones. We have a lot to work on for the next competition,” Despain said.
   After the robots are programmed to function certain tasks, they are placed on the climate board where the team can pick a challenge for the robot to accomplish. Each challenge receives a certain amount of points and that is what determines if a team wins.
   The girls on the Flying Monkeys team are the program testers. Michaela Fundum explained how the mission is for the robot to accomplish the challenges in a specific environment on the climate connections board.
   “There are different areas on the board that Bernie (our robot) moves to. There are spaces that represent environments. Bernie even talks sometimes. Sometimes he says hi,” Fundum said.
   The teams plan out what challenges their robot can perform. The series of challenges are called missions. Some of the challenges listed are construct levees, raise the flood barrier, open a window, get people together, and insulate a house. There are many other options that the teams can pick depending on what their robot is programmed to do. All of the challenges are based on functions in an environment.
   Bernie, the robot the Flying Monkeys team built, competed against three other teams. Even though Bernie did not make the most points by completing the challenges, the Flying Monkeys did get 2nd place for robot design.
   In Division I the following teams placed: All aces took 1st for robot design. Lucky #7 took 2nd for Robot Performance, and the Matriarchs took 3rd place for Robot Performance. In Division II, the Flying Monkeys too 3rd place for Robot Design.

Last Updated ( Thursday, 30 October 2008 )