Fun!
Our team loves to have fun. Every meeting starts with team building exercises. That’s been a bit more challenging this year, with zoom meetings and keeping our distance. But we have found lots of ways to still have fun while keeping out distance, including walks, tag, snowball fights and online games telling stories, drawing pictures, and so forth.
Software
This year we decided to code our robot in python. Why? Because python is cool! And we wrote a micropython imulator, which is also cool! All our code and documentation is available on github - just search for Radioactive Robotics FLL.
Robots!
Each year we design a new robot. This year we spent the summer building robots at home, and comparing them over zoom calls. We also built a checklist of what we though the most important aspects of our robot are. Then, we compared each robots against our checklist and voted on the design we wanted to keep.
This year, we also made a CAD (LeoCAD) set of instructions for our robot, so everyone could build copies at home!
Innovation Project!
Our innovation project is still under development, and so you will have to wait to see it,. Sorry! (Unless you are a judge or otherwise know the secret password.
Outreach!
We really enjoy working with other robotics teams and teaching people about robotics. This year, sadly, our outreach was more limited than usual, as we could not go into the schools or sports events to talk about robots. We did, though, meet with a few groups from our community over zoom to talk to them about FLL. We also got to work with our FTC partner some,
Season Highlights and Challenges
This season has had lots of challenges:
Wearing masks all the time;
Quarantines, illness, and trying to work over zoom;
Working when its really, really cold and watching the robot get too cold to work;
Keeping our team small to be able to work in the coaches’ shed.
But we have also had a lot of fun! This year’s highlights include:
Learning python!
We can use Bluetooth devices and more easily listen to music
We have had a much longer season than usual, working from late July through now and so have gotten to get more done on everything
Learning how to use LeoCAD
Snowball fights, playing ninja, trampolines, core values exercises
Pictionary, even over zoom
Learning power point
Learning about sports and ideas for the community
Petting and playing with the coaches’ dog
We have gotten to learn new music from listening to what each other likes
Getting to see each other, even when school is remote
