Saturday, October 26, 2013

Engineering Design Process Saves the Day!

Our robot skit contains explains how we used the Engineering Design Process to complete the FLL challenge of building a robot that is able to maneuver the board and complete as many missions as possible in 2.5 minutes. The engineering design process is a 5 part process that is meant to make us critically think about what we are doing and why. The steps are Ask, Imagine, Plan, Build and Improve. We choose to do our presentation this way because we think it easily shows the different steps we took to complete our robot challenge. 
First we needed to ask ourselves what we needed to do and how we were going to do it. Next, we imagined how we wanted our robot to be. We of course had a million ideas of what our robot should look like and what attachments would be useful in our missions. After that we made a plan!  We needed to make a plan on how to build the main bot and then how we would achieve success on each of the missions. All that was worth it though because after all our planning we finally got to start building! Then I realized that building was the hardest part of all! We created our attachments but some of them didn't work so we needed to change them which was perfect because the last step in the engineering design process is IMPROVE! And that is really fun too! We had a chance to think critically about what the current design was doing and ways that we could improve it. Sometimes we had to go through the process multiple times on the same mission, but once we finally had success it was a great feeling!

We have started a countdown til competition....14 days!

Check back soon!!

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Finishing Touches!

Our costumes came in the mail over break and we couldn't wait to try them on....they are pretty itchy but we are still excited to use them. :) 

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Programming Day 1

Programming

Aloha, my name is Taye Mowat. My fellow teammate Kaitlin DeRouin and I have worked very hard on one of our robot missions to capture Lego animals, people, and safety equipment. This mission is to get the animals, people, and safety equipment to the red safety zone safely. Our main focus on October 9, 2013 was to capture the two animals (the dog then cat) then knock the coconut leaf off of the tree without interfering with the electric line.

It took us about one to two hours to finally capture the cat and dog, but we finished before practice was over. Now we just need to think of a way to knock off the coconut leaf, get the people and safety equipment, and bring them all to base. After we figure out how to accomplish this, we will need to find a way to put all the objects into a box like attachment, drive it to the red safety zone, and return to base. To complete this mission we are using two stick like pieces called an axle. Holding the two stick like pieces together is a smaller connector piece. At the tip of the axle is another tiny piece that sticks out and supports the objects from falling. That is our progress on this mission! Wish us good luck...we may need it!
 
  
 
   

Monday, October 14, 2013

Introducing Dave Kozuki!

Dave Kozuki is the lead developer of Social Media for Natural Disaster Response and Recovery. Dave helped us with his level of expertise on social media in the event of a natural disaster. He gave us a website of a new and cutting edge invention that relates to our project and introduced us to the CEO of that product. He also helped us think of ways we could make our innovative solution better by making us think critically and giving us the hard answers we were looking for during our interview.  We were not sure how important social media would be during a natural disaster but Dave was able to help us realize that social media is growing to become a huge piece of natural disasters. We are so happy that we were able to work with Mr. Kozuki and he could help us with our project. 


Thursday, October 10, 2013

Challenge Board building party!

On Friday October 4, our team got together and built our 2013 Nature's Fury robot challenge board. 

IT WAS AWESOME! 
I really liked it. At first it was hard but then my teammate Kaitlin and I built one of the models together and I learned how to build with LEGO's. We were having a great time, laughing and talking! She spent a lot of time helping me learn how to follow the directions and after each step, checking to make sure the model built looks identical to the picture in the directions.  When I learned how to do it I did three other models by myself, but it definitely wasn't easy. I did have a hard time at first but then I proved to myself I could do anything I wanted. By the end of the day I was in LOVE WITH LEGO's!! 

I am really looking forward to building our robot to complete the missions and spend more time with LEGOs! 

Adios!
Marianna C. 

Dr. Stewart Morgan, PhD, DVM


Hi, Taye here to share with you what we learned when we interviewed Dr. Stewart Morgan from the Molokai Humane Society. I thought Dr. Morgan's presentation was very helpful for our team because our innovative invention might include a microchip. Since he presented microchips we have a better understanding of how to make our invention better and we also know how the band will work and why. I enjoyed the presentation because he helped us a lot and the presentation was very descriptive.  Below are my notes from his presentation. 
Dr. Morgan Presentation Notes

·       Microchips show different information depending on how the microchip is detected or scanned.

·       Sometimes microchips can cause a type of cancer in the area were the microchip is placed.

·       Once a microchip is placed in a body it cannot be taken out or turned off without complicated surgery.

·       Some microchips measure temperature in an animal’s body.

·       There is a type of microchip that measures blood glucose.

·       There is a device that is able to scan/detect microchips it scans the microchips number and sends back the microchips information from that certain microchip that the device scans.

·       The more the microchip is programmed to do the larger the microchip will be.



Uses of a Microchip

·       Electric circuit (circuit=a tiny device that uses very little energy).

·       Microchips don’t use batteries and never lose battery they use energy from electric fields.

·       When microchips are implanted in a body there is no pain.

·       A small reaction in the body creates to keep the microchip in place.

·       Microchips do not cause total disruption.

·       After the microchip is implanted contact the microchip company and register information of human or animal just in case any thing happens.


Wednesday, October 9, 2013

CHEESE!

We have been practicing everyday from 10am-5pm in Auntie Jenn's hot office and we still manage to keep on smiling! Here we are working on a teamwork activity!