Great accomplishment!

KCMO Rumble canceled

The Kansas City Missoury Rumble at Lincoln College Prep MIDDLE School scheduled for Saturday December 15th has been canceled due to weather.

We will have our meeting today as scheduled.

SMS Rumble Canceled

The Rumble at Shawnee Mission South scheduled for Saturday, December 8th has been canceled due to weather. If you were planning to attend, please email me and let me know that you got the notification: bvrobotics@gmail.com

Thanks,
Chris.

Persistence

Engineers need patience and persistence when solving problems. This work can be very frustrating and the road to success can be long. Kyle showed focus yesterday as he worked for an hour to solve a specific mission requirement.

BVMS vs BVHS

It really was close. I thought we had them. The laser tag was a blast and this coach even had a great time trying to get the bases. Thanks BVHS for including us! We look forward to working together in the future.

DARPA Urban Challenge

I have been following the DARPA challenges for a few years. The students from this team may someday be involved in something like this. Here is an article (thanks Mr. Johnson) about this years Urban challenge. Very cool stuff!

Here are some shots of the Students working away at some practice programming challenges.

Gracious Professionalism

Yesterday during the Garmin hanger tour, we saw a prime example of Gracious Professionalism. It is great to have a tangible example of what this term means! Many thanks to Garmin!

Oh, and weren't the airplanes cool?

Technology Workshop

Lets have an NXT technology workshop next Saturday, October 20th from 2pm to 4pm at BVMS in the Guided Discovery room.

Blue Valley Schools helping the envrironment!

Check out this article about how local schools are working to be easier on the environment.

Garmin hanger

Here is a link to directions to the Garmin hanger.

View Larger Map

Playing field

The field mat and parts are in. Lets assemble the parts and discuss it all on Thursday!

Awesome Scribe

Thanks to todays Scribe for a great job. The team will benefit from having notes collected here. We will rotate who gets to be Scribe as we continue. The PDF for todays notes is HERE.

Strategy

We are getting close to developing our game strategy. Please study your assigned missions and look at the rules too as needed. Thursday we will talk about:

• Your challenge difficulty factor
• Features you think the robot will need for the challenge
• Challenge interactions

Here is a link to the challenge videos. And here are some samples of what the competitions are like.

Spirit

This was one of my inspirations for starting a robotics team. We talked about it during meeting #1. Read more HERE! Someday every CyberCardinal WILL contribute to something like this.

We GET the rules!

What a great meeting today to go over the challenge rules. I am impressed by the student's attendance and participation! Thanks to the parents for helping with that. Everyone seems genuinely interested in understanding what we need to know about the challenge before building our robot.

Very soon we will start into the technical stuff (designing, building, programming and testing)!

Let's build "BasicBot" on Thursday as a foundation for the team's ultimate creation.

Competition Videos

To give you an idea of what the competitions are like, here are some videos of passed competitions:
FIRST Lego League - IL State Competition
University of South Carolina FIRST LEGO League
FIRST Lego League Ohio State Tournament

Lego fun!

Another great meeting. It was good to see the students creatively work with our "raw materials", the Legos. Remember, we will quiz each other Tuesday on the Rules so please read those handbooks and check the FLL website.

Competition Date Update

Tentative competition dates have be sent out by the Kansas City FLL. The qualifying event is scheduled for the weekend of December 7th. The Regional event is scheduled for February 23rd at UMKC. Again, theses date are tentative so they may change and I will keep everyone updated. You can also see the team calendar HERE.

CyberCardinals!

We have a name! Thanks to those who attended todays meeting. Here is a link to the handout and also to this mornings video. Remember to study your book and we will quiz each other on the Rules section next Tuesday.

I am planning a free-for-all at Thursday's meeting, so come and have some Lego fun!

New fuel source?

HERE is an article for an interesting potential new fuel source.

Use this link to get the handout for the Tuesday, September 11th meeting.

What a great meeting this morning! Thanks to all who attended! Here is a brief summary of what we covered:

• "Contract"
• Team member introductions
• Robotics season overview and development process
  
• Challenge overview
• Research project overview
  

Remember, please bring your yellow contract sheet and 2 team name ideas to Tuesday's (September 11th) meeting.

Your mission...

The challenge is out! Check it out here. Review the missions and the research project. We will need to especially know the rules. There are also some sample videos of the missions.

See everyone tomorrow for our first team meeting in the guided discovery room at 6:30am.

My email is not obvious on the blog so if you need to contact me, please use this link.(bvrobotics@gmail.com)

Thanks to all the parents and students for coming to the kick off! I had a blast and enjoyed meeting everyone. Here are some good links to browse:
FIRST Website
FLL Website

I have also setup a calendar of events that I will keep updated as the season progresses.

Email me if you would like a copy of tonights PowerPoint.

I look forward to seeing the kids Thursday, September 6th at 6:30 in the Guided Discovery room.

Thanks,
Chris.

Informational meeting Thursday August 30th at 6pm in the BVMS commons. All students invited. Please bring your parents and see what all the buzz is about.