Project Selection and Mission Progress

Last week we selected a topic for our project.  We had narrowed the choices to Wildlife Counting, Bee Colony Collapse, and Spectacled Bears.  It was great to see that numerous people had done some detailed research on the topics.  After some excellent presentations we voted to see which project we would do.  The vote couldn't have been closer, with Wildlife Counting coming out ahead of Bee Colony Collapse by 5 to 4.

In researching this topic, Olivia emailed the President of the Wildlife Conservation Network and asked him a few questions:

Dear Mr. Knowles,

    My name is Olivia O'Driscoll and I'm emailing you on behalf of my Lego Robotics Team.  This year we (and 70,000 other teams) are working on finding ways to improve human-animal interactions.  We spent a lot of time looking at the WCN website and talking to people in conservation and think we have an idea.  We're hoping that you could give us your thoughts on whether it would be worthwhile.

    A basic problem in conservation seems to be figuring out which species need help and whether the help they get is working.  Answering these questions requires knowing how many of a species exist and whether the number is growing or shrinking.  One paper we saw said "Accurate and on-demand animal population counts are the holy grail for wildlife conservation organizations throughout the world because they enable fast and responsive adaptive management policies." (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0156342)

    The people who wrote that paper came up with a way to count wildebeest in aerial photos.  They say it works pretty well, but still needs some improvement.  We think we might be able improve on it. 

    Since those people are scientists instead of conservationists we thought we should check with you before getting too excited.  We're hoping you could answer a couple of questions for us:

1) Do you think this is a problem worth working on?

2) Are there solutions that are already good enough and cheap enough?

3) Are there obstacles to getting solutions adopted even if they work?

    We know you're super busy but if you could give us any insights on this problem, or any others you think would be working on we'd really appreciate it.  Thanks!

-- Olivia and the Comet Warriors

He kindly got back to us and anwwered:

Dear Olivia and the Comet Warriors,

Thank you for your email and thanks for your commitment to wildlife conservation.  I apologize for the slow response as I've been traveling.

Before answering your questions I wanted to qualify that I'm not a conservation biologist nor have I done any of this work in the field.  I do support this type of work and my 22 years working in this space does give me a broad perspective.

So, to answer your questions:

1) Do you think this is a problem worth working on?

Yes.  In order to affect any type of change one must be able to measure the system before you take action and after the action is completed.  Counting is expensive, time consuming, and inaccurate. For example, Paul Allen spent $6 million counting elephants and the results took three years to come out, however, the results of those data are defining conservation actions across Africa for elephants.

A less expensive, more accurate way of counting animals would be of great value.

2) Are there solutions that are already good enough and cheap enough?

There are a host of solutions and you can probably find a number online.  They include, for example:

a) Aerial counting from planes

b) Using camera traps to see what walks by

c) Collecting scat (poop) and doing DNA analysis to figure our how many unique animals it represents and then using statistics to estimate populations.

d) Putting up "hair combs" on trees and then putting scent on them so cats (Canadian lynx, mountain lions, etc) rub them and then analyzing the hairs.

These solutions range widely in their cost and the value of the data.  Sometimes you only want to know if the animal exists at all.  Sometimes you want to know if there are "some, many, or a lot" of the species.  Sometimes, like with the Amur leopard, of which there are only 32, you want to know EXACTLY how many there are.

Some of the methods are good enough and cheap enough.  Many are not.

3) Are there obstacles to getting solutions adopted even if they work?

Yes, there are many obstacles.  Scientists can be set in their ways and have strong egos about how things are done.  Cost is always a consideration.  Using the same method over a long period of time is important so you can compare to previous results.  However, if there is a better and less expensive way to do this it would be eventually adopted and used widely for the great benefit of wildlife conservation.

I hope this is helpful.  I'm excited to learn more about your idea and if we can make it happen.

All the best,

Charlie

This should give us a starting point on our research, and an idea of what kinds of animals we might count and how accurate we need to be.  We'll talk more about this this week, and the word for the week is "Charlie".

An example problem would be to figure out how many zebras are in this picture:

We also worked on our robot missions.  For several missions we tried this approach:

1) See if we can do the mission with our hand.

2) See if we can design a robot attachment to do what we did with our hand.

3) See if we can attach the attachment to the robot and do the mission by pushing the robot.

4) (For this week) see if we can program the robot to move the way we pushed it.

See you all on Thursday!

Missions and Priorities

Last week we worked on developing a strategy for accomplishing our robot missions.  We looked at all of the missions based on how hard we thought they would be to complete, and how many point they were worth. 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 10 or less we gave the mission a score of 1.  If it was more than 10 but less than or equal to 20 we gave it a score of 2. If it was worth more than 20 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 Shark Shipment 27 3 Easy 3 6 All Samples 35 3 Easy 2 5 Beekeeping 15 2 Easy 2.5 4.5 Feeding 80 3 Medium 1.5 4.5 Camera Recovery 15 2 Medium 2 4 Training and Research 27 3 Medium 1 4 Biomimicry 15 2 Medium 2 4 Milking Automation 15 2 Medium 2 4 Panda Release 10 2 Medium 2 4 Seal in Base 1 1 Easy 3 4 Milk in Base 1 1 Medium 3 4 Milk on Ramp 4 1 Medium 2.5 3.5 Animal Conservation 20 2 Medium 1.5 3.5 Prosthesis 15 1 Medium 2 3 Service Dog 15 1 Medium 2 3 Clearly the Shark Shipment is the mission to start with.  Olivia and Lily had written a program last week to do the shark mission, but it wasn't as reliable as we would like.  Nick, Neshaya, Lais and Alyssa worked some more on adjusting the speed and alignment and got it to work five times in a row.  Yay!  (And Yay is the secret word for this week.) Tara, Macy and Hannah got the Animal Exchange mission model pretty much completed so we have what we need to try all the missions now. Also last week we talked more about possible research projects and narrowed the choices down to: a) Bees and colony collapse b) Animal counting c) Spectacled bears. Those interested in each possible topic should come this week with whatever research they could do over the past two weeks.  Each person or group interested in a topic can present the problem that interests them, and the possible innovation that would help solve that problem.  After the presentations we'll vote on which project the team should do.

Teamwork, Mission Models, and Project Ideas

Today we did four things:

1) Homework review.  Most people had read the blog and watched the video, and Neshaya won the draw for the homework prize.  Congratulations, Neshaya!

2) Worked on defining what a team is, does, sounds like, and does not do.  We then tried to use what we learned in a teamwork exercise.  The exercise was to get the gummy worm through the gummy ring and into the plastic cup using nothing but paperclips.  The idea was to work  in teams of two and find the best way to solve the problem.

3) Built several of the mission models for this year's competition.  Congratulations to Alyssa, Lais, Hannah, Nick, and Neshaya.

4) Programmed the Shark Transport mission.  Congratulations Tara, Macy, Lily, and Olivia!

Homework for Monday:

Pick an animal and think about how it interacts with humans.  Hopefully you did this last week. What's new for this week is to talk to an expert about how those interactions might be improved.  For example, dogs' natural instinct is protect their owners and their property, which is part of the reason some people own them.  Their instinct, unfortunately, leads them to attack mail carriers, or to run into the road to bark at cars and get run over.  Is there a way their interactions with mail carriers and cars could be improved?  The secret word for next week, by the way, is Molly, which is the most common female dog name in the English language.

Ecole Catholique Cathedrale FLL 2016

Welcome back, Comets!  We've got a lot of work to do this season and not a lot of time to do it. The competition will be held November 19 at Duncan MacArthur Hall (Queen's West Campus).

We'll be using this blog again this season to keep you informed about news, tips, progress, dates, and so on during the season.  Please check back regularly to make sure you get all the necessary information!  Each week there will be a secret word contained in the week's blog post.  Please show up each week knowing the secret word for the week.  The word for this week is Flipper (a TV dolphin who helps people.)

Remember that the First Lego League competition consists of three main parts: 1) core values, 2) the project, and 3) the game.  The core values define how we work together as a team, and how we interact with other teams.  The project is a team research effort in a specific area, with the team required to develop and share a solution to a particular problem.  The game involves the design of a robot to complete as many missions as possible on a specially designed board.

Most participants find the robot component the most fun, but remember that the overall score is based on all three components, with each counting for roughly one third.  Your robot could complete every mission in the game successfully and your team could still finish last overall if you don't do well on the project and don't demonstrate the core values.

To get up to speed quickly on the core values, the project and the game, please check out the videos below:

Overview:

Project:

Robot Game:

The video, game rules, and project descriptions are also linked to from the First Lego League Challenge Page  

Congratulations, Comet Warriors!

The Comets had a great tournament at MacArthur Hall yesterday!  It was a long day, from 7:45am until 4:30pm and despite some ups and down things went very well overall.  After three very well done presentations things started going downhill as the robot didn't really want to perform.

Comet Warriors

The team pulled together, however, and worked through the problems one round at a time.  They ended with a tournament-high score of 458, giving them the Robot Performance award.  In addition they won first prize for their research project.  They'll be off to the provincial championships in Oshawa on Jan. 16th.  Congratulations!

Some more photos of the day:

Progress to Date and Tournament

We've gotten a lot done since the last post!  We've shared our project idea with several experts and gotten some good feedback.  Dr. Linton liked the spinning magnet idea and thought it could work.  When we asked why nobody was using the ideas we found patents for he said it's probably because they cost too much.  Silicon that's 99.9999999% costs $25/kg.  Silicon that's 98% pure costs $4/kg.  So to be practical a solution needs to cost less than $25 per kilogram of awesome silicon, or less than $4 per kilogram of pretty good silicon.  Dr. Loock also liked the idea, and he too wondered about the cost.  We'll need to figure out how much ours solution costs to see if it's practical.

Dr Tenney also liked the idea, though silicon wafers aren't his specialty.  He did say that we could probably save ourselves a drill and a bunch of magnets by using an induction motor instead.  He sent a video of someone who made one with a lego controller and some non-lego pieces.  It basically gives the same effect as spinning magnets, but without anything moving.  See the video below:

Since Dr. Linton and Dr. Tenney are both named John, the secret word for the week is "John".

We've also made good progress on the robot programming.  Olivia spent 6 hours working on it on Sunday.  The robot now does the Careers, Valuables, Compost, Windshield, Plastic Bag, Turtle, Truck, and Methane missions for a total of 600 points.  We have a few more missions that are close to working and may be able to get almost 800!

We've also made good progress on the t-shirts.  They are supposed to arrive today and get printed by Thursday.  Let's hope there are no delays.

We've made good progress on the presentation as well.  Things we still need are: a song!  And practice!  We'll need to practice this a lot before the competition and there's very little time left.  Who wants to write a song?

We're meeting with Team HiTech (Ella Hsu's team) at Olivia's house after school tomorrow (Weds.).  We're hoping to do our presentations for each other, and try out our robots in competition.

We have another expert to speak with on Friday at 11:30.  Her name is Dr. Lauren Linton and she's the Deputy Director of the Tufts University Innovation Institute.  They focus on turning ideas into products by involving people with a lot of different skill sets, and may have advice for us on how to make our idea better.

We've emailed the tournament schedule to everyone.  Please arrive Saturday morning no later than 7:45 at MacArthur Hall (corner of Sir John A MacDonald Blvd. and Union St.)

Research on separation based on filtering, density, and magnetism

Can a filter separate the silicon particles from the silicon carbide particles?

Tried: Coffee filter.  Everything went through.

Tried screen filter: nothing went through.

Olivia looked up particle sizes and found silicon  averaged 1 micron, and silicon carbide averaged 10 microns.  But the bigger silicon particles were bigger than the smaller silicon carbide particles.  So there was an overlap of  about 50% of the silicon with the silicon dioxide.  We migh get half of the silicon if we used a filter of 1 micron or less.

Conclusion: Filter will recover 50% of the silicon at best.

Can silicon and silicon carbide be separated by density?

Neshaya did a report on separating silicon and silicon carbide based on density.  She found that silicon was less dense than silicon carbide.  She also found that there were several liquids with densities between the two, including bromal, bromophorm, and sodium polytungstate.  There are a number of patents in patents.google.com that describe separating wire saw slurry based on densities of silicon and silicon carbide.  According to Dr. Linton, nobody is using these techniques, so we should see why not.

Can a magnet separate silicon particles from silicon carbide particles?

Searched Youtube for: "magnet repels conductors"

Found video on aluminum being attracted by magnets, and glass being repelled.

Found video on water being repelled by a magnet.  Repulsion was very small.  To eliminate friction, water was placed in a test tube inserted in styrofoam floating in a tub of water.

Found video on magnetic top floating above a sheet of copper.  Top only floated when it was spinning.  Top had six magnets alternating north and south poles.

Found a video on spinning magnets being used to sort aluminum at a recycling center.  Spinning magnets popped aluminum off of a conveyor carrying rubber, plastic, etc.  According to the video "Eddy Currents" produce the magnetic force that repels the aluminum.  The word for this week is, you guessed it, "Eddy".

Built a spinning magnetic top using a car polisher, tape, and magnets.  Placed it under a plastic tray with tin foil in it but it didn't really work.

Tried again with a square of piece of aluminum, and the aluminum spun.

Tried it on aluminum floating on styrofoam in water, and it worked.

Checked with saran wrap between the magnets and the aluminum to make sure the air wasn't spinning the aluminum.  Still worked.

Tried with the aluminum removed to make sure the magnets weren't spinning the styrofoam or the water.  Nothing spun.

Conclusion: Spinning magnets can make a sheet of aluminum spin.

Questions: Does it work with silicon?  Does it work with silicon powder?  Does it not work with silicon carbide?

If it works with silicon and not silicon carbide, could it be used to separate the two?  If so, how?