a) Understand what the assignment was.
b) Plan an approach for completing it that included all team members and made the best use of the available time.
c) Solve the assignment as a team.
We call this approach UPS. Interestingly, UPS is a parcel delivery service whose slogan is "United Problem Solvers" That's what we're trying to be. Their slogan used to be, "What can brown do for you?", and the secret word this week is Charlie, from Charlie Brown.
At the end of our meeting we prioritized the robot missions to decide which ones to work on. We did this by:
a) Dividing the group into pairs and assigning each pair a set of two missions.
b) Having each pair think hard about how they would get a robot to do each of the two missions.
c) Deciding whether the mission would be Easy, Medium, or Hard to complete.
We then gave all the easy missions a score of 3, the medium missions a score of 2, and the hard missions a score of 1.
We then looked at the points awarded for accomplishing each mission. If the number of points was 40 or less we gave the mission a score of 1. If it was more than forty but less than or equal to 60 we gave it a score of 2. If it was worth more than 60 we gave it a 3.
We then combined the scores to give a priority, with 6 being the highest priority possible (easy and lots of points) and 2 being the lowest priority (hard and not worth many points.) This gave us a list as follows:
| Mission | Pts | Pts Score* | Diff | Diff Score* | Overall Score |
| Compost ejected | 60 | 2 | Easy | 3 | 5 |
| Person in sorting area | 60 | 2 | Easy | 3 | 5 |
| Yellow bin east of guide | 60 | 2 | Easy | 3 | 5 |
| Engine/windshield installed | 65 | 3 | Medium | 2 | 5 |
| Other team's green bin in safety | 60-120 | 2 | Medium | 2 | 4 |
| Toy plane(s) in safety | 40-80 | 1 | Easy | 3 | 4 |
| Compost in safety | 20 | 1 | Easy | 3 | 4 |
| Valuables in safety | 60 | 2 | Medium | 2 | 4 |
| Yellow bar(s) in other teams Safety | 60 | 2 | Medium | 2 | 4 |
| Blue bar(s) in other teams Safety | 60 | 2 | Medium | 2 | 4 |
| Yellow bin on truck | 50 | 1 | Easy | 3 | 4 |
| Yellow bar(s) in bin | 6-54 | 1 | Medium | 3 | 4 |
| Animal(s) in circles | 20-60 | 2 | Hard | 1 | 3 |
| Methane in truck | 40 | 1 | Medium | 2 | 3 |
| Methane in factory | 40 | 1 | Medium | 2 | 3 |
| Yellow bar(s) in west transfer area | 7-63 | 1 | Medium | 2 | 3 |
| Blue bar(s) in bin | 6-36 | 1 | Medium | 2 | 3 |
| Blue bar(s) in west transfer area | 7-42 | 1 | Medium | 2 | 3 |
| Black bars untouched or in flower box | 8-96 | 1 | Medium | 2 | 3 |
| Car folded and in East Transfer area | 50 | 1 | Medium | 2 | 3 |
| Plastic bag(s) in safety | 30-60 | 1 | Hard | 1 | 2 |
| Chicken in small circle | 35 | 1 | Hard | 1 | 2 |
What this table shows is that we should focus first on ejecting the compost, and work our way down to putting the chicken in the small circle.
Your assignment for next week is to:
a) Review the Lego Vinir robot videos. They are the kings of the base robot / attachment world. They have Youtube videos of their robot from an earlier competition, along with explanations of how it works. There are a lot of good ideas there. Check them out at:
Lego Vinir Overview
Lego Vinir Step 1
Lego Vinir Step 2
Lego Vinir Step 3
**Update** We now have a team subscription to www.FLLCasts.com - a site that explains how to do a lot of interesting things with lego robots. If you want access, give me your email address and I'll set up your account.**
b) Think hard about a trash problem we might be able to help with be either eliminating the need to create the trash in the first place, or finding a better way to handle the trash once it's created.
