@ the global HQ

Recently I went to the FLL global headquarters in Manchester, NH for a 2011 FLL promotion video.    9  selected volunteers were given scripts to memorize.  But that wasn't all the fun.  All sorts of FLL knickknacks such as previous robots from previous robot games like FTC( FIRST Tech Challenge)  and FRC( FIRST Robotics Competition) were piled
     high.  Basically, it was a FLL geeks heaven.  I also made a lot of new friends.

This years new mission mat(food factor).                          

 Nations that participate in FLL(above) and Lego mosaics(below).

MA Championship in WPI

It has been a while since I last posted. Yes, we went to finals. No, we didn't get an award this time. However we had lots of fun and we did our best. We also broke our own record from 165 to 185! I am very surprised and happy that we made it this far. Soon we will be able to sign each other's team T-shirts.

Thanks to all the parents that supported and helped us along the way. Special thanks to our team coach, who happens to be my dad.

One of the things all the team members always looked forward to at each team meeting was snack break, maybe even more than working with the Legos, because mom normally made all the snacks from scratch, which leads to my next topic.

Next year's theme is "Food Factor" and we are planning ahead of time. I hope next year will be as fun and as exciting as this year's "Body Forward".

Winning rookies!

Today was the competition. We had four rounds to try to score high but that wasn't it. Our core values, project presentation and our technical presentation all count too. We all thought we wouldn't qualify or get a prize, but surprisingly, we got both. We got the "Innovation and Strategy" award. We had to support each other through the whole thing. We all played a major role in the competition. Bryca thought that we could not do if we didn't have any of these team members. I agree. The coming Saturday, we will go to the Worcester for MA State Championship. Cheer us on!

presentation practice

Right now we are practicing our project presentation. Our project title is "The Second Hand" because our project presentation is about ways to improve prosthetic hands. In one of my earlier posts, I showed a prosthetic hand we made. In this post it shows a picture of me playing the piano with a strange headset and our prosthetic hand. The headset is supposed to control the prosthetic hand using a wireless signal. The headset reads your thoughts with four sensors. It then sends your thoughts to the "hand" using a wireless connection. We are practicing for our project presentation using our two prototypes. We have to practice really hard because the project presentation is one third of the whole competition. Wish us luck!

Team mentors

I would like to introduce four unfamiliar faces - Carl, Sam, Tom and Andrew (from left to right). They are our team's mentors/advisers. Three of them are also some of the people who are designing and creating the Transition, a "Flying Car". They pretended to be the judges so it would make it a heck lot easier for us because we would know what it's really like to be right in front of actual judges. It was terrifying! Although it was terrifying, we have to thank them a lot. They also gave us lots of great constructive advice.

Hugo-Bot

We voted for our robot's name as "Hugo-Bot". We named him after a character in a book called "Fable Haven". Hugo is a golem (a golem is a hulking creature made from dirt, mud and pebbles. They also follow all commands). We just call him Hugo for his nickname. I sure hope Hugo isn't just a hunk of plastic. I hope Hugo is just about as good as a real golem. We have a personal wish that Hugo will stop rolling over the mission modules and have good luck.

the prosthetic hand project for "Body Forward"

As part of the FLL challenge, we also have to do some research about the topic of this year's challenge. Annamira and I decided for our project to research about "prosthetics". Prosthetics is a branch of medicine where biomedical engineers try to make artificial body parts. We also decided to make a prosthetic hand for ourselves. As you can see, in the pictures above, our prosthetic hand actually works! It is a quite amazing object. I wonder, could this lead to more ways of making prosthetics...?