Challenge 1
Run the mission set once, untimed, and score yourself against the real rubric.
The mission 4 min
Competition day. Two scored runs, best one counts, and the engineering journal is handed in and marked with them.
Everything is now as it would be at a real event. You may not touch the robot once a run has started. You get two attempts, not ten. The clock does not stop while you think.
The journal is not homework. At WRO it is scored alongside the run, by a judge who will ask you about it. Bring it to the table.
The round 5 min
| Rule | Detail |
|---|---|
| Time limit | 2 minutes per run |
| Attempts | Two. The better score counts. |
| Start | Robot entirely inside the starting area at HOME, hands off before the clock starts |
| Touching | Not allowed. Touching ends the run and you keep what you have scored. |
| Between runs | 5 minutes to change anything — code, robot, attachment. Log what you change. |
Scoring
- 20 points — the energy module ends fully inside the delivery yard at HOME.
- 10 points — the module is collected and carried but not fully delivered.
- 10 points — the robot squares on at least one line during the run (a judge watches for it).
- 10 points — the robot finishes back inside the starting area.
- Tie-break — the faster completed run wins.
Before the clock — the pre-run checklist 8 min
Every serious team has a checklist, because under pressure people skip the obvious. Write yours in the journal and run it before each attempt.
- Battery level. Check it on the Brick. A robot tuned at full charge steers differently at half.
- Recalibrate the Colour Sensor, in this room, with today’s lights on.
- Port View — all four ports reading sensibly.
- Cables — nothing near a wheel, nothing half out.
- Attachment — firm, and not blocking the sensor.
- The right program is selected and the robot is square in the starting area.
Skipping step 2 is the classic. The lights in the room today are not the lights from lesson 5. Teams that do not recalibrate lose the first run to it, every time.
Setup — five minutes, then hands off 6 min
Five minutes to set up. Work the checklist, place the robot, and then step back from the table. One team member is the driver (presses the button and nothing else); one is the observer, whose only job is to watch and write down what actually happened.
The observer matters more than it sounds. During a run, everyone remembers the dramatic failure and nobody remembers that the robot hesitated at the second junction — and the hesitation is the useful information.
Run 1 and Run 2 20 min
Run 1
Hands off, clock on. The observer records the time at each leg and anything unexpected. Score it against the table above and write the number down before discussing anything.
The five minutes between
This is the most valuable five minutes of the block, and the discipline is the same as lesson 7:
- Name the single biggest points loss in run 1.
- Make one change aimed at it.
- Write down what you changed and what you expect to happen — before run 2.
One change, not four. Teams that alter four things between runs cannot tell which one helped, and if run 2 is worse they cannot get back to where they were. Competition is not the place to explore.
Run 2
Same checklist, same discipline. Score it. Then check the prediction you wrote down: did the change do what you said it would?
The debrief — where the time actually went 8 min
As a class, put every team’s best score and time on the board. Then answer one question honestly: which part of the run cost the most time?
For nearly every team the answer is the same. The two-state follower wobbles, and wobbling is slow — the robot travels a zig-zag when the line is straight, and it cannot be driven fast without losing the line altogether.
Do not try to fix it today. You can shave a little by tweaking the steering number, and you will hit a wall quickly, because the limit is the type of control and not the tuning. Block 2 replaces the rule entirely: instead of two fixed corrections, the robot will steer in proportion to how far off it is. That is lesson 11, and the wobble you measured today is what it is measured against.
The journal — submitted today 9 min
Entries 1 to 7 plus today’s. A judge should be able to read it and see how the robot came to be the way it is.
| From lesson | What must be there |
|---|---|
| 1 | Mat sketch with corrections; missions by points per second; both route versions |
| 2 | Both design sketches, the port table, four decisions with reasons, one rejected idea |
| 3 | Robot photographs; measured distance per rotation at two speeds |
| 4 | The six-number calibration table; sensor height; edge reading |
| 5 | Follower tuning table; the three baseline HOME–F times |
| 6 | Squaring angles, one pass and two; the crooked-start experiment |
| 7 | Attachment photograph; the six legs; the failure log |
| 8 | Pre-run checklist; both run scores and times; the between-runs change and its prediction |
Close the block with two sentences:
- The thing that cost us the most points today was…
- The one thing we would change about the robot before Block 2 is…
What Block 2 does with all thisThe robot survives; the follower does not.Show meHide
Block 2 moves to the WRO 2022 Garden Robot mat. The base robot you designed carries over — that is why lesson 2 spent so long on the mounting points and the reserved ports. What changes is the control: proportional steering replaces the two-state rule, and then My Blocks let you stop copying the same twelve blocks into every leg. Keep this journal open; Block 2 starts by comparing against your baseline times.