Clark, Y8, Gubei Campus

The Robotics Club recently participated in the First Lego League Robotics Competition here in Shanghai. This was the first time our team participated in the competition. All of my outstanding teammates had collaborated exceptionally well to create one sturdy, innovative robot, with several unique aesthetic attachments and an excellent programme. Throughout the first few months of our second semester, we had been diligent and contributed toward our final project. Our project was not only to do table missions, but also to create a project analysis of the relationship between animals and humankind. This was a presentation to show the judges that our programme, design strategy, and YCIS Robotics Club posters could develop ideas in Robotics Core Values.

This exciting day began when we all woke up at around 6:30 a.m. and headed to school to pack the Robot and equipment, and to get ready to leave together. Once everyone arrived, we went to tournament venue and started to set up our booth. We put posters on the table and presented some of our little machines, such as our robot, “barking dog”. We had very little practice on the day of the competition (each team had only 30 minutes to change programmes according to practice tables) before we were called by volunteers to head to the Problem Analysis module of the event. All of us were a little nervous, but excited at the same time.

We greeted the judges then gave our “Animal Cruelty-Free Meat Marketing” presentation. We explained how “artificial meat” can make a huge beneficial impact on people. After this, we went to the  Design Presentation module of the event. We mainly focused on our “service dog” mission. We reviewed our engineering techniques with the judges, especially the ski element, to prevent being stuck while going over our “service dog”. Then we also explained how the programme would be used to finish three missions together, so that it would be efficient. Next, we described the big changes our robot had undergone since we began building it. While explaining, we all began to realise how much our robot had been transformed. Last but not least, we had a “core value challenge”. We were split into two different groups with a huge whiteboard placed in between the two groups. One group was supposed to verbally describe how to build one easy “Lego Chicken”, while the other group only had the essential components. This challenge was to test our communication and collaboration skills. We managed to finish half of the chicken after five minutes!

In the afternoon, we finally had our table competition. We prepared four programmes: Shark Shipment; Service Dog + PigBee + Manure Collection; Beehive + Honey; and Milking Automation. As we progressed further through the table competition challenges, we made more improvements to our programme, making it more viable. In the end, we managed to score 54 points. We took 1st place in the Robotics Design category and 4th place in the Table Competition.

During the award ceremony, every group member received a participation awarded, a programme, and an engineer design award. We were all very happy, just simply delighted. We look forward to the second competition in three weeks, and we will be continuously progressing toward it!