Chapter 13: Final Challenge

Did you know that by applying the LEGO construction and coding skills, you can participate in various international robotics competitions such as World Robot Olympiad, FIRST LEGO League, Robotex, and others? These are great platforms to express your creativity, innovation, logical thinking, and problem-solving skills, and they also help you get great experience working as a team.

In this chapter, you will be solving a similar challenge using your LEGO BOOST kit. Use the following setup for your robot and then read the rules carefully before you start building and coding your robot:

Figure 13.1 – Final challenge setup

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• Building the robot
• Let's code

You must build a robot that can carry three 2x4 LEGO bricks – one red and two black. The red brick represents food, while the black brick represents medical essentials. The robot needs to do the...

Technical requirements

In this chapter, you will need the following:

• A LEGO BOOST kit with six AAA batteries, fully charged
• A laptop/desktop with the Scratch 3.0 programming language installed and an active internet connection
• A diary/notebook, along with a pencil and eraser
• Black tape, 1 inch wide

Building the robot

Answer the following questions once you have understood the challenge properly:

1. Will you need a two-wheel drive or a one-wheel drive robot? ___________________
2. Will you build a back-wheel drive or a front-wheel drive robot? ________________
3. Which type of mechanism will you need to carry three LEGO bricks with the robot? A conveyer belt, a grabber, or a dispenser? ____________________________
4. Do you need to follow the line to finish this task accurately? Yes or no? __________

Now, let's start building the robot that will crack this challenge. Remember that you will never get the final solution on the first try. Keep trying until you get a robot with a functional dropping mechanism.

Let's code

Always break your bigger problem into multiple small problems and solve them one after another. This will help you to solve tasks quickly and easily.

Activity #1

Write some code so that the robot can reach the desired school from the starting point. Drop the medical essentials at this place.

Activity #2

Now, write some code so that the robot will travel from the school to the desired home and drop the food there.

Activity #3

Now, write some code so that the robot will travel from the desired home to the hospital and drop the medical essentials there.

Activity #4

Reach the stop position and stop the robot.

Activity #5

Now, club all these small programs together and try to crack the complete challenge. Your code must be accurate enough that it does not need any human intervention from start to stop. Try to solve this challenge slowly at first. Eventually, increase the speed of the robot and try to crack this challenge in as little time as...

Summary

In this chapter, you built a robot to crack the challenge outlined. You learned how to use different mechanisms effectively to solve the tasks at hand. You also applied your coding skills to ensure that the robot finishes all the tasks as needed in the given time slot. Try to create such challenges on your own and solve them to sharpen your construction and coding skills. You can also consider using the LEGO BOOST mobile app so that you can use the sensor in distance sensing mode too. In the next chapter, we will learn about the grabbing robot.

Further reading

To learn more about various robotics competitions such as World Robot Olympiad and FIRST LEGO League, look at the following links. See whether you can team up with your friends/form a team at your school and participate in these competitions:

• WRO: https://wro-association.org/home
• FIRST LEGO League: https://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/fll