Time to play catch up! The RoboRangers haven’t been keeping up with their blog all season but that is all about to change. Coach Susan is tackling that task week. Look for highlights of our season being posted this week. For us, it is a trip down memory lane of a really fun season!
The “Psycho Geek”
Here are some pictures of the this year’s robot, the “Psycho Geek”. One “robot” is the geek and solves most of the missions and the separate robot attachment is PSYCHO! It can clear the obstacle path in under 5 seconds!
The RoboRangers and Dr. John Nielsen-Gammon
For our project, we needed to find an expert that was familiar with the threat of hurricanes on Texas and their impact on our communities. Dr. John Nielsen-Gammon responded to our email and offered our team help with our project. Dr. Nielsen-Gammon is a Professor of Meteorology at Texas A&M and the current Texas State Climatologist. We were lucky to have Dr. Nielsen-Gammon come to one of our team meetings to talk with us. He said that the biggest unsolved problems with hurricanes are :
- The rapid formation of storms
- The strength of hurricane winds
- storm surge on barrier islands, like Galveston.
- people not evacuating. Over 140,000 Galveston residents did not follow mandatory evacuation orders before Hurricane IKE made landfall, despite dire warnings of storm surge and certain death from forecasters.
He also talked a lot about traffic and its impact on hurricane evacuations. 
New Challenge – Nature’s Fury
This year, the game theme is “Nature’s Fury”. Teams are tasked with identifying a community that can be impacted by a natural disaster, identifying a problem that the community faces when the natural disaster strikes, and then coming up with an innovative solution to that problem. The thematic playing field for the robot game is full of lego missions that simulate natural disasters that they autonomous robot needs to navigate through. It’s a pretty neat robot game this year.
2013 FLL North American Championship Tournament highlights
The RoboRangers had an amazing experience at LEGOLAND. We met new friends from Canada, teams from all over the continental US, teams from Hawaii and Mexico, and teams from Korea! Our favorite moments are too numerous to count. We put together a little video documenting our time at LEGOLAND. Enjoy!
Practice round
This afternoon was our official practice round on the competition tables. The Flying Monkey seems to be performing well. Tomorrow is project judging and Sunday are the official robot rounds and core values judging. We can’t wait!
RoboRangers at LEGOLAND!
We’re here!!!!
The RoboRangers in Miniland!
Final Countdown!
Last meeting before LEGOLAND! The pressure is on to make sure everything gets packed!!! Check and double check!
Getting closer!
Damian and I had our second coaches call with the director of the FLL North American Championship Tournament last night. We’re getting excited, as I know our team is, about all the amazing opportunities that await them at the tournament. The RoboRangers received their schedule and pit assignment as well. We are sharing our pit with teams D’Limited (17), Veritas (20), and Tomorrow (21)from Korea, the Pantheres (3900) from Alberta, Canada, the Hurricanes (2492) from British Colombia, the Raiderobots Blue (4640) from Alabama, and the The Golden Oldies (373) from South Carolina!!! How cool is that! The team is going to have an amazing chance to meet kids from literally all over the world. I’m pretty sure our pit teams are all staying at the new LEGOLAND Hotel too so the team will have even more time to share experiences with their new Korean, Canadian, and American friends. We will be running our robot matches with teams Tomorrow, Hurricanes, and the Golden Oldies.
The RoboRangers 
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