Nashua Catholic FIRST LEGO Team

THE SPACE COWBOYS - Team 1915

2007 FIRST LEGO League Challenge

What is FIRST LEGO^® League 

FIRST LEGO League (FLL) is a combination of Legos, robotics, and research that encourages skills such as team building, problem solving, and creativity.

More information @ http://www.firstlegoleague.org/

 

 

For the project, we choose to audit our own school.  The Nashua Catholic building is old and it has two parts; the old building which is 60 years old, and the new building which is 40 years old.  After we performed an in-depth audit of the building, we found out that our school could use a lot of improvement on the energy consumption.  We have complied a list of short term energy solutions that Nashua Catholic could start implementing without too much expense. 

2007 FLL Challenge  The Power Puzzle

 

 What We Did

Nashua Catholic

FLL Team

The Space Cowboys

 

Matthew Z.

Andrew N.

Greg B.

Mike R.

Michael P.

John W.

Andrew S.

 

The FIRST LEGO League competition has three parts — the robot, the presentation, and technical and team work interviews. 

 

For the robot portion, the team has to build a robot out of LEGOs, and program the robot to accomplish the Challenge Missions.  There are 14 different missions that the robot can do on the competition table.  Each mission is related to the theme of energy conservation and alternative energy.  The Space Cowboys team is using Robolab software to program the robot.

 

For the project, the team has to select a local building and perform an energy audit to evaluate its energy consumption.  Then, the team has to compile short and long term solutions to address the possible energy problems in the building .  The Space Cowboys team selected the Nashua Catholic school building for the audit.  They investigated the energy usage in the school and produce a list of ways to improve the energy usage.

 

The last part of the competition is the interviews.  In the technical interview, the judges talk to the team about their robot and the programs that they wrote for it.  In the teamwork interview, the judges make sure that the team worked together during the season.  One of the major part of FIRST LEGO League is to emphasize teamwork and cooperation.

NC FLL Space Cowboys Team’s Invention

 

We also had a great idea for a new invention that our school could use, the Solar Powered Floor Fan.  We created a prototype of the fan and it works like this – it has a solar panel mounted on top to generate electricity to run the fan’s DC motor.  It also charges a battery when the fan is not running.  It is a convenient one-piece unit that can be placed anywhere that has a lot of sunlight. 

This year, the FLL challenge is POWER PUZZLE and calls for students to “explore how energy production and consumption choices affect the planet and our quality of life today, tomorrow, and for future generations.”

We also compiled a list of long term energy solutions, which involves using solar power which is a renewable resource and it is free.  We also come up with our won invention, The Solar Floor Fan.  In addition we are starting to work at a recycling program for plastic bottles and milk cartons, in the cafeteria at our school.