FLL Mission Overview Part 2 - Solar Power Satellite

Objective: Press the red lever on your side of the table to unfold a solar panel on the satellite. Press the lever before the team on the other side of the table to make the radar dish point to your table.

Point Worth: 15 points for pressing your lever anytime, with a bonus of 5 points for pressing it first (making a total of 20 points).

Mission Location: North (top) center of field.

Estimated Difficulty Level: 1/10 for minimum points, may vary for maximum points.

Time Length Rating: Low

Unique Challenge Aspects: Only mission which incorporates a competition between the two teams opposite each other on the tables.

This mission is probably my favorite one this year. I always like the competition missions, because they're so easy to complete by themselves (or at least the past couple ones that I've been in were), but the competition aspect increases the difficulty level by an unknown quantity. You might have to hit the lever in 5 seconds to win in some cases, while in other rounds your opponent team may not even go for it! This adds a neat twist to the challenge, since you can never be sure that what you have is good enough. We'll probably be seeing some amazing solutions to this challenge at different state tournaments and especially at the World Festival.

Another interesting aspect of this challenge that is different from past years is the fact that it's located almost directly in front of the base! (hence the 1/10 difficulty rating) It almost seems like the designer purposefully made it like that to encourage teams to try for it. The fact that you get points for hitting your lever any time also encourages people to try for it, so there will probably be more teams going for it this year.

-Jonathan

Richard's comments: Just a quick reminder that you are NOT allowed to switch the pointer to your side if you did not trigger it first. Some teams did things like this in past years, for example in No Limits, they scooped the ball out of the center hoop (the objective was to be the first to place their ball in the center hoop) and replaced it with their own. This called for some of the most amazing devices, but it looks like designers wanted teams to go another apporach this year.

MINDSTORMS Retires!

2023 is the 25th Anniversary of the MINDSTORMS brand. For 25 years, MINDSTORMS has educated and inspired a generation of robot builders, both children and adults. Unfortunately, the LEGO Group decided to end the line on December 2022. Many ROBOTMAK3RS have been passionately involved with the development of MINDSTORMS through the MUP and MCP programs. Even with the newest Robot Inventor line, several ROBOTMAK3RS were invited to submit additional bonus models that were included in the official app. Regardless of the retirement of a major LEGO robotics product line, ROBOTMAK3RS continue to MAKE-SHARE-INSPIRE using all LEGO robotics platforms available to us. Here is the official statement from LEGO. Since its launch in September 1998, LEGO MINDSTORMS has been one of the core ‘Build & Code’ experiences in the company’s portfolio, carrying with it significant brand equity and becoming a stand-out experience for the early days of consumer robotics and leading to current Build & Code

Celebrating 25 Years of MINDSTORMS

In celebration of the 25th Anniversary of MINDSTORMS, we take a trip through history. Please also visit ROBOTMAK3RS Community every week as we highlight different projects all through 2023 in celebration of the anniversary. Some of the early history is based on the content shared by Coder Shah in our MINDSTORMS EV3 Community Group . Some of the text and links may have been edited from his original posts for consistency and clarity. 1984 - Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen watched a TV program called "Talking Turtle," where MIT professor Seymour Papert demonstrated how children could control robot "turtles" using LOGO, a programming language he developed. 1988 - The collaboration between MIT and LEGO resulted in LEGO TC Logo in 1988, which allowed students to control LEGO models using computer commands. The video shows Papert demonstrating TC Logo. 1990 - LEGO TC Logo was hampered since the robots you built had to be tethered to a personal computer. LEGO and MIT

Celebrating MINDSTORMS with a Remix Part 1

In honor of the 25th Anniversary of MINDSTORMS, we asked ROBOTMAK3RS to combine a LEGO set of their choice with a MINDSTORMS set. Here is what these five ROBOTMAK3RS came up with. MINDSTORMS Chess Assistant by Arvind Seshan Overview: When you are new to chess, it can be a challenge to remember which pieces go where. Now, you can use machine learning and LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor to build a tool to help you learn where all the chess pieces go on the chess board. Sets used: LEGO® Iconic Chess Set (40174) and MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor (51515) Review: I really like how the chess set base can store all the pieces underneath and that the board neatly splits in half for handy storage. The chess pieces themselves are very sturdy and well built. My only criticism is the building of the box itself. It was quite difficult to see what pieces to use and since the entire box is made mostly of thin plates, it took a lot of time and patience. I would have liked the storage area to be sliding dra

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