FIRST Lego League: Power Puzzle
Written by T.J. Lipscomb on December 07, 2007
The SIS Thundering Tigers, the FIRST Lego League team mentored by the Gaelhawks, has just completed another very successful season.
This year, the team tackled the 2007 challenge, named Power Puzzle. As this name suggests, the goal this year was expanding awareness about cleaner, more efficient energy. This was reflected in the missions, where the team programmed the robot to accomplish tasks such as deploying solar-powered satellites and placing wind turbines.
At the beginning of the season, Tigers made the switch to the new NXT, a large improvement over the older Lego Mindstorms robot base but also a formidable jump. Despite this large change, the mission team found it much easier to program the robot to do tasks. They also found that the robot performed more consistently than it had ever before. The robot performed very well at the three competitions the SIS team attended, holding the lead at Enfield all the way until the final round. They also won two robot-related awards for their efforts. At the Bridgeport Local competition, judges awarded the Thundering Tigers the Technical Award, while at the State Tournament, the team received the 2nd place award for Innovative Programming.
For the research project, the assigned task was to choose a community building, perform an energy audit, and present their ideas for improved energy efficiency to the community. The project team chose the Shelton Community Center for their evaluation. After visiting the community center, the team decided that the efficiency lighting in the center could be greatly improved, and noticed several things that could be better in the pool area. To present their ideas, the team made a floor model of the community center out of Lego bricks.
