Robotics Reflection – A Student’s Perspective

by admin | Nov 21, 2014 | First Lego League, General, Robotics, Robotics Club Core Values, Robotics Competitions

Robotics Reflection

By Tharushi

I wanted to try robotics at the start of the year because I wanted to experience something different. It was hard at first because there wasn’t many people I knew and building the robot and programming it was a bit complicated. However, after a few weeks, I had got to know three others from Robotics Club and I had learnt much more.

I found out that the students from Robotics Club had the opportunity to take part in a robotics competition: FLL (First Lego League). Already, I had completed many missions and co-operated well with my team, so I decided to participate. I created a presentation at home and talked about how kids need and want to learn in the 21^st century in front of Robotics Club. A few weeks later, I discovered that I got chosen, along with Shaini, Imogen, Dillon and Dhiluka, my new team.

Over the next few months, we worked, built and programmed tirelessly to prepare for the competition. We completed tasks at home, did missions after school, presented to students and staff members, met up at lunch times, organised Fuze video chats and discussed important things o Edmodo. It was hard work, but we were determined and focused. Our team motto was “WE WILL TRY!” and then “WE WILL TRY TO TRY!” and then “WE CAN DO THIS!” Our play was well-practised. We met up during holidays and weekends. Most importantly, we worked as a team, co-operating and encouraging each other.

The FLL World Class Competition was an AMAZING experience. We competed against 21 other schools. It was held in King David School in Armadale. We rushed to the practice room to check our programs several times. It was interesting to see how other robots were constructed and how they completed missions. The hardest thing to do was position the robot. We failed many times because of that, but it was still a learning experience. We were proud of our journal; the judges seemed to like it. At the end, we won the Core Values Award, for showing Gracious Professionalism and coopertition. We were proud of our work and all agreed that we had learnt a lot.

I am definitely going to continue robotics next year and will try to be in the FLL team next year. My goals are to complete more missions and use the robot sensors more to gain precision and accuracy.

Robotics has been very fun this year!