United Problem Solvers

Today we looked at teamwork in a number of different contexts.  We did a game of charades, identified types of trash we could work on for our project, and prioritized the missions for the robot game.  In each of these activities we worked to:

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.