“Are you watching the sumo wrestling this lunchtime?" That’s not a question you’d get asked on a regular day in school. But it was no regular day and KDS is no regular school.
Let me backtrack. It was the first week of term and a group of ten Year 6 students sat in front of our teacher Heath for our first Kindle Robotics program. Heath took out of a box something that surprised us all. He said that we were to build robots that we would then programme to fight against each other but all I could see in front of me were hundreds of Lego parts.
The first step was to construct the robot. This involved following instructions and attaching the wheels, motor, brain sensors and wires to make a fully formed robot. Then the moment of truth … “Beep, Beep” . With that sound we realised our robot had come to life.
But a robot with no code is like a human with no brain and so the next step was coding. We then used the software and dragged and dropped some blocks of code to make the wheels turn. We placed our robot onto the training arena, pressed ‘start’ and prayed for the best. Our robot spun around then made a beeline for the edge of the table and hit the ground smashing into pieces. “Back to the drawing board.” I said sadly. This meant a complete redesign of the code. Luckily, it was second time lucky and eventually the robot obeyed its command like a dog obeying its master and obligingly found the nearest object and pushed it off the table. Now his brain was fully formed and ‘Daniel’, as we now called him, was ready for action.
It was the day of the competition. At lunch we all piled into the Technology classroom. Round 1 was EV3 1 vs Daniel. Our robots were put side by side. The games had finally begun...
It all looked promising until I saw the big glitch. “Not again!” I cried. Our robot had turned around and was heading off table. I ran towards it and caught it just as it had tumbled off the edge, centimetres from the ground. Trying to save my robot, I hadn’t noticed that the EV31 had a motor failure and lay on its back like a dead fly.
EV3 1 draw Daniel draw.
The next match was Bob vs Daniel. I pressed ‘start’ and the fight was on. The robots looked like dancers twirling around a stage. Then they locked eyes and charged like rhinos. But when they collided, BOB went flying back into the abyss below.
Daniel faced his biggest challenge - the grand finale - EV3 vs Daniel. Replaying EV3, the two robots started parallel to each other. I pressed ‘start’ and the robots moved. Daniel followed the back of EV3 1 like a swarm of angry wasps. Suddenly EV3 1 turned around and they both pushed each other like 2 opponents in a tug of war. Again Daniel headed towards the edge but the tables turned and EV3 1 went tumbling down instead. The crowd roared like lions “ Daniel Daniel Daniel!”
While it took hours to build Daniel, it took only minutes destroy him. By 5th period the once amazing Daniel was in hundreds of pieces where he lies waiting to be reinvented by Term 2’s group of Year 6 Robotics enthusiasts.
Ollie Wainrit
(Year 6)
MAY