The Clock is Ticking!

The LEGO Mountaineers are back with a new spring robotics event!  After the FIRST LEGO League season ended, two teachers from the Newhall competition created their own LEGO robotics event to continue encouraging kids in robotics.  Soon after the season ended, our team, the LEGO Mountaineers, applied for this event and were accepted.  

We realized that to be most efficient during this event, we would need to have more people participating, so we asked former team member, Faith Steele, to join us.  The LEGO Mountaineers also made the decision to include two new members to our team.  Kevin and Derek Simmons have both joined our team and we are thrilled to have them.

The teams started mid-March and will be preparing until the end of April when we will be competing.  The Spring Showdown competition consists of three parts: the mission mat where each team completes the individual assignments, the sumo wrestling event where robots are randomly paired up against each other and have to push the opponent out of the ring, and an on the spot event where the teams have to bring parts and computers to complete an assignment that will be given to them at the competition.

The mission event is divided into two parts: line following and the individual missions.  At the beginning of each match the robots must start at the opposite end of the base and follow a line back.  There are markers that the robot must pass to earn points, and the goal is to get back to the base.  Once the robots are back in the base the robots can complete any mission in any order they want to.  There are five missions that the teams can complete:
Weight Lifting – the robot must lift a barbell onto a stand

Dirt Molecules – the robot must clear the sumo ring of dirt particles and bring them back to base
Fencing – the robot must knock only one LEGO man off of a table
Basketball – the robot must drop the buckey ball through a basketball hoop
Long Jump – the robot must trigger a switch that catapults a LEGO man into the air.
The LEGO Mountaineers are very excited about this event and we hope to keep you updated.

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