Meeting 7 Date: 18-8-06

Time: 3.00pm to 5.30pm
Venue: Science Centre
Members present: Julia, Xinyi, Chun Ling, Jael
Members absent: Syazana

Theme: Learning by observing

It was our second trip to the Singapore Science Centre. However, this time the atmosphere was a lot more different as compared to our previous visit. As the day of competition draws closer, teams from many other schools too flocked to make use of the 3-D mission fields. After several attempts, we manage to find a power point and set up the laptop. We followed our teacher’s advice, to observe and learn from other teams’ good points as well as to avoid mistakes made by the teams. In this way, we gained more insights on how to build and program the robot more efficiently.

Next, we settled down to work, splitting work into 2 parts, namely building and programming. The builders were hard at work, trying to improve on the structure of the robot after observing and gathering the necessary requirements. Below were some points what they noted down:

• RCX could be relocated to the upper portion of the robot rather than following the conventional way (Mission 2)
• Wheels for both missions could vary to facilitate for smooth movement of the robot in the 2 missions.
• Expand the width and length for the extension(for collecting buoys) for the robot

As for programming, we completed the 1st mission. In the meantime, we looked into the tutorials portion of the ROBOLAB software. We also realized that we should have gone through the tutorials even programming, but it was not too late. Through this, we found new features that we had not discovered before. We also learnt to program the robot more efficiently. Thus, the skills obtained better prepare us as we moved into editing the 1st mission.

The day did not end too well as the new robot could not withstand the pressure exerted by the RCX while on the field and collapsed. However, we were not discouraged but were determined to reconstruct it again during the next training session. Look forward to better days ahead!