Dinobot Challenge

Tonight the teams were asked to create a dino-bot that would roar and crash through a set of pillars knocking them all down in less than a minute.  The teams would not only be judged by their ability to create a robot to meet the challenge, but also a robot that looked and acted like a dinosaur.

The teams did a great job with this challenge.  There was a lot of trial and error.  The teams would try a style of robot and then adapt as needed to make it work better.

Team 1 had a robot that had long arms on each side but it fell apart easily.  The team continued to add supports and wheels to keep the arms intact during the procedure.  Unfortunately, the robot was not knocking the pillars down, but pushing them across the room!  After several attempts, they realized that the arms were not tall enough to get to the tops of the pillars.  So, in one last attempt to have success (down to the wire on their time constraints!), the team added hooks to the end of their arms to raise the level of the arms on each side.  Unfortunately, the added hooks did not have the support needed to keep the arms up and this attempt failed as well.  They were very disappointed but I was glad to see them trying until the very end.  Also, they tried to add sound effects to their robot which made their robot unique.

Team 2 struggled with their robot knocking down the pillars as well.  However, just as Team 1 persevered, so did their efforts.  The big difference with the Team 2 robot was the way it looked.  In fact, the more the team adapted the robot's arms to reach out far enough, the more it began to look like a dinosaur.  In the end, Team 2 not only successfully knocked down the pillars, but they had a dinosaur that began the procedure, opening its jaws and rushing through the 'town' knocking everything down with ease!  YAY!!!  Great job Team 2!

We will be taking off next week, but will finish up strong at the end of the month with our alligator!