Making Robots Too

So things were going well with the project, we had a topic that the kids were really interested in and some mind-blowing experts and the results were working out.  We were also working on the robots too.

My clean room without metal robots suddenly had a lego
table in it again - what the heck??

In the spring, while at Worlds, our youngest son was there and unbeknown to us was watching the live stream of the Lego competition that was in a different venue.  They beam in the other competitions so we can watch at each venue.  We were all wrapped up in the fact we were winning our division and he was getting mad at the live stream.  He was mad as his score in the Lego robot game in December at the state championship would have been 12th in the world without the extra four months he would have spent on it.  So his team was capable of winning it all.  That chapped him, to tell you the truth.

All summer - he got to work by himself and sometimes
with team mates, resolving the game with a different
concept.

When we returned home, he got out the Legos and called over a few buds.  My husband and I were wrapped up in the controversy over how our division ended and getting caught up on work.  I walked downstairs late one day to find that the entire Lego table was set up (that means the kids got all the wood out and rebuilt it - a mean feat for adults!) and set up the competition field.  Ahhhhh - what's going on kids???

He had found the robot reveal video of the German team that won the entire competition and it had a five second movie of the robot being built in a digital designer program.  He realized that if he put it on pause, he could advance it through the screens of the video and see how they had designed their robot.  He sat there with his next door team mate and rebuilt the entire thing.  Then they studied their video of their winning run.  Then they modified it - improving it with ideas of theirs.  They spent a few weeks programming it and basically re-solving the challenge they had done already in the fall.

YIKES.  I think I mentioned before how this competition can inspire kids.  We stepped away from the kids and just let them go.  Sometimes failure can be a huge motivator.  And truthfully, my kid would rather watch sports or youtube or play games on his phone that come up with an independent project of his own, unlike his brother who always has five or six projects in play.  When given a problem to solve that is competitive - he is all gusto.  But without a goal like that, he isn't sure how to fill his time.  So this was quite a turn of events and we decided to see how far he took it.

Pretty far as he toyed with it most of the summer learning more advanced techniques and ideas.  He studied championship teams on you-tube all summer and tried things out.   When they started out the real Lego robotics season - it was like they had made a huge leap forward and now seemed like they could compete with the Europeans.  In the USA, the age for the competition is capped out at 14.  In Europe it is 16.  The difference is because the metal division is too expensive for their schools (parts get shipped from the USA).  But Lego is made there so they can be 17 at the day of Worlds and still be competing with the 9-14 year old Americans.  So the Europeans almost always win the world robot championship in First Lego League.