by Naveen
We are participating in the FLL for the first time. Most of us haven't even heard about LEGO Mindstorm when we registered for the challenge. However it was all very exciting. Just getting the robot move on the mat was so much of satisfaction.
So when we started programming our missions, most of our strategies were distance based. We didn’t focus a lot of consistency. As we began to prepare for our tournament, we slowly began to realize that our programs were not always working as we wanted them to. Our biggest learning point was that distance based strategies aren't always consistent. The consistency problem really frustrated our team, but we remained calm and didn’t make any changes to the program, because we knew that we shouldn’t change a program that had previously worked.
Then, our coach showed a few videos of other teams’ table performances. We had an epiphany afterward. We realized that sensing lines are a good way to achieve consistency. At first, it was hard to program the robot to sense the lines, but we figured it out in the end. We ended up making myblocks for all of the line sensing programs because the programs were the line sensing logic was little complex and we didn't want to repeat it in many programs. Afterward, when we put these myblocks to use, we found that sensing lines improved our consistency drastically.
So when we started programming our missions, most of our strategies were distance based. We didn’t focus a lot of consistency. As we began to prepare for our tournament, we slowly began to realize that our programs were not always working as we wanted them to. Our biggest learning point was that distance based strategies aren't always consistent. The consistency problem really frustrated our team, but we remained calm and didn’t make any changes to the program, because we knew that we shouldn’t change a program that had previously worked.
Then, our coach showed a few videos of other teams’ table performances. We had an epiphany afterward. We realized that sensing lines are a good way to achieve consistency. At first, it was hard to program the robot to sense the lines, but we figured it out in the end. We ended up making myblocks for all of the line sensing programs because the programs were the line sensing logic was little complex and we didn't want to repeat it in many programs. Afterward, when we put these myblocks to use, we found that sensing lines improved our consistency drastically.