Lunar Landroids

A Moonbots Challenge team

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Back to Landroids Landing

Posted by admin on December 2nd, 2010

Team Landroids has successfully completed the 4-months long Moonbots Chanllenge as the 1st place grand prize winner!

We were invited to visit the LEGO Group at Denmark for 3 days at the end of September. See our video summarizing the Moonbots Challenge, reaction of winning Moonbots, photos from Denmark, and the live Moonbots mission demonstration to the LEGO Group CEO.

In September 2010, the Moonbots award was put to good use for the FIRST Tech Challenge registration, thus began our rookie journey in the FTC division as team #4220, working with the unfamiliar metallic robot.

Landroids has conclude 3 successful seasons (counting 3 years and one month to be exact) as a FIRST LEGO League team, wrapping up our FLL career with the Moonbots grand price. Our success has inspired closed to 100 students in our community and schools to join FIRST in 2010. We have founded and expanded the Livingston Robotics Club in the last 3 years, which now has 12 teams in Jr. FLL/FLL/FTC this year.

On October 22, 2010, our team hosted a Moonbots Exhibition to 5,000 visitors as a part of the NJ Science and Engineering Festival (see photos). At the same time, the first version of our FTC robot was participating in a RoboFest FTC scrimmage (see photos). Talk about multi-tasking.

This Lunar Landroids website was created to document our Moonbots journey…which was a wild one, full of surprises! It had completely took over our entire summer of 2010, but it was worthwhile with such chance of a life time.

Going forward, we will come back down to our official earth pad. Landroids’ progress will be posted on our team website, with photos and videos posted on our Facebook. If you happen to visit this Lunar Landroids website, please also follow our journey on traversing the obstacles in the “Get Over It” FTC season. For now, signing off, Houston!

Robot Live Webcast Recording

Posted by sfy on September 12th, 2010

Landroids Live Webcast of Moonbots robot mission run. Recorded on Tuesday, August 24, 2010, noon Eastern Time.

Mission (Near) Impossible

Posted by CopabX on August 25th, 2010

Our live webcast was one of the most stressful days of our Moonboots competition.

Good Night Moon

Posted by CopabX on August 22nd, 2010

Final Monbots robot run tonight on 8/22/10. Signing off till our live webcast on August 24, 2010, noon Eastern Time. It has been fun!

Final Phase 2 Robot Design

Posted by CopabX on August 22nd, 2010

The final Phase 2 robot design followed our Phase 1 robot proposal and further develop the robot arm and refine the hopper. Initially, the design was to spear and flip loops into a top hopper on the robot. However, as we started to consider collecting loops placed in any orientation, the robot arm design soon evolved into a complicated claw assembly. Eventually, the claw robot has to be discarded in order to complete the missions efficiently. We felt that we had a good claw design, but we also learned that sometimes, when KISS is necessary, we had to sacrafice our pride and sentiment in order to move forward.

Our final robot is a much simpler fork flipper robot for mechanical consistency. The Flipper Robot Design was divided into a couple major components:

End Effectors: A flipping fork and a top mounted expandable hopper
Motors: 3 NXT motors
Drivetrain: Rear wheel drive, 2 wide flat rubber tires, 2 tank treads, 2 front skis with rollers and wheels
Sensors: Rotation, 1 compass, 1 EOPD, and 2 ultrasonic sensors
Accessories: Key Fob Spycam with the built-in time stamp
Programming: LabView

Moonbots Team Documentary Video

Posted by Gfare on August 22nd, 2010

The team documentary video was done on Friday and now posted! I like our team documentary, it was very difficult to get a fine balance between creativity and information, but I think that we have reached that point…. where we have plenty of information and yet it is entertaining and compelling to watch, to me at least.

Robot Design Photos

Posted by sfy on August 22nd, 2010

A photo collection of all the robots built through the Moonbots season.

Phase 2 Robot Design – Claw Robot

Posted by CopabX on August 21st, 2010

In anticipation to collect loops that were placed in any direction, a double claw robot was built. This design was later discarded due to concerns with its efficiency and maneuverability, but the robot was such a massive and impressive creation, its design concept is documented here for the record.

The Claw Robot Design was divided into couple different components:

End Effectors: A double claw assembly, cable arm, fold-up basket hopper
Motors: 2 Power Function and 3 NXT motors
Drivetrain: Rear wheel drive, 2 wide flat rubber tires, 2 tank treads, 2 front skis with rollers
Sensors: EOPD, compass, ultrasonic sensor, IR Link
Accessories: Video Camera and counterweight