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!
Category Archives: FIRST Lego League
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!
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.
WE’RE GOING TO LEGOLAND!!!
The RoboRangers recently competed at the 2012-2013 FIRST LEGO League South Texas Regional Tournament, which brought together the top 62 teams from around the region. At the event, the RoboRangers were honored to be 1 of only 4 teams selected to give their project presentation to everyone in attendance, roughly 2,000 people! The team was also awarded 2nd Place for Project Presentation. Their overall high performance throughout the season earned them an invitation to the 2013 FIRST LEGO League North American Open Tournament of Champions at LEGOLAND!
The 2013 FLL North American Open Championship Tournament is one of four FLL international tournaments and is a celebration of the current Senior Solutions season. Only 72 FLL teams from the United States, Puerto Rico, Canada, and Mexico are invited to attend this event, held at LEGOLAND in Carlsbad, California in May. The RoboRangers are honored to be among the few teams, out of over 21,000 worldwide, that have been awarded a coveted spot at this tournament.
This experience is going to require resources, dedication, and planning. Each team attending must pay for its own travel and team support expenses. The RoboRangers have set a fundraising goal of $22,000. This will cover the registration fees, food, lodging, and travel expenses for each team member and one parent, as well as team identity and display materials to highlight their team, sponsors, and South Texas.
The RoboRangers would greatly appreciate your support!
Countdown to the Championship
The RoboRangers have been busy getting ready for the south Texas Championship. They’ve made some additions to their research project and skit, as well as preparing a core values poster and executive summary. The robot handlers have been busy practicing at getting faster achieving their missions. The team has also had fun doing more teamwork challenges. Damian challenged the team to take paint sticks and tape to spell out the word robot.
The team added on to that and spelled “ROBORANGERS”. Awesome.
And to get out all the extra energy on a Friday night, the kids did pushups, even honorary little roboranger Conley. Note Morgan finding her center…doing the “child’s” yoga pose. Namaste Morgan.
Being goofy.
After the teamwork challenge, Fiona took over the camera and captured a few gems.
FLL Qualifier at Revere Middle School
The RoboRangers had a fantastic day at their qualifier. The team was easily spotted with their crazy rainbow mohawk hair!
Marcus and Aidan ran the first robot run of the day and scored the team’s highest score.
Bobby and Evan were the handlers for the second match and worked awesome together! Alex and Ray had a fantastic third run with the buzzer beating race to the ramp! Everyone cheered when it balanced just as the timer rang. Phew!
The team gave their project presentation and completed their team work challenge between matches. Their skit was hilarious! So much fun was had by all!
After their final match, the team sat down with a technical judge and went over all the aspects to their robot, the “Flying Monkey.”
At the end of the day, the RoboRangers received an advancement ticket to the Lone Star South Texas regional. Their day was highlighted by receiving the 1st place award in Strategy & Innovation for robot performance and the 2nd place Champion’s Award!!!! Way to go RoboRangers!!!
When we arrived back home, Duncan and Conley, along with their babysitter Ashley, made this awesome banner for Aidan, Fiona, and the rest of the RoboRangers!
The RoboRangers 
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