Hello everyone, my name is William. I would like to share some experience of our 2019 FLL City Shaper season.
I was the captain of the “SF Hackers”, an award-winning FLL team. There were five team members, Justin, Terry, Michael, Peter, and me. Everyone in the team had a specific job. But whenever anyone in the team needs help, others would be there to help. Justin was in charge of robot programming. Terry managed our bank account to make sure we were under budget. Terry also led the presentations (innovation project, core value, robot program, and design). Michael led the robot building and worked together with Terry and Peter for the presentations.
I mainly did the coordination including time management, everyone’s work and quality. I also led the presentation during the tournaments. I worked hard to make our wonderful team better.
As a rookie FLL team, we had a lot things to learn. So we started early. We had our first team meeting in May. We met twice a week and two hours each. We divided into two groups during our meetings. One group on innovation project and another on robot game.
We learnt EV3 programming and robot building during the summer break. There were good resources to learn from, for examples, ev3lessons, flltutorials, builderdude35, and a book called Winning Design!: LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 Design Patterns for Fun and Competition. Our strategy was to launch our robot without aiming. When designing our robot, we made sure our robot having three FLAT sides to align our robot against a wall or a jig easily. We used line following and mission models to align our robot. We also tried combining as many missions as possible into a single launch because it took time for us to change attachments and load/unload cargos. Our strategies worked well for FLL City Shaper robot game.
We enjoyed learning a lot of new things. But most importantly, we learnt how to handle our frustration. Many times, we faced a problem but we woludn’t give up. We had our own ways to encourage each other. We would celebrate when we solved a problem and had a successful mission run!
We treasure our experience in in 2019 FLL City Shaper Season. Due to coronavirus pandemic, 2020 FLL Challenge RePLAY season will sure be more challenging. But I believe, worked as team, we will have another journey full of discovery and fun.
