About this video
Students in a robotics team describe how they brainstormed and built a SumoBot for an NXT robot sumo competition. The speakers stress that innovation means coming up with your own ideas rather than copying competitors, and they explain how they tested and refined their design. Their winning strategy is a shooter and front and back shields, and the goal is to be the last robot standing in the arena.
You'll be able to
- describe innovation as building your own unique ideas rather than copying others
- explain the brainstorming step and the step of picking ideas that actually work
- connect a robot's design features to the goal of a competition
Key words
- Innovation
- Coming up with new, unique ideas and building on them, rather than copying what others have done.
- Brainstorming
- The first step of generating many ideas before choosing the ones that will work.
- SumoBot
- A robot built to push opponents out of a circular arena in a sumo competition.
- Sensor
- A device, such as a light sensor, that lets a robot detect its surroundings, like the arena edge.
- Prototype iteration
- Building, testing and modifying a design repeatedly until it works, as the team did with the shooter and shields.
Transcript
SPEAKER 1: So we're going to do one more round. SPEAKER 2: Innovation is coming up with new ideas. And it's just like making your own unique ideas and building on those. If we copy other people's ideas, our competitors will know about it and they can easily stop us.
So we have to come up with our own ideas to get an edge over them. First we were coming up with ideas on what we were going to do. That's the first step, brainstorming. And then the second part was just getting all your ideas down and picking a few that actually work.
SPEAKER 3: We brainstormed a lot of ideas to just making a shooter which would shoot. And then we just tried to modify to make the shooter stand up well and kind of fit it into place like a puzzle. SPEAKER 2: So here we have double treads, and it's really hard to push.
And right here we have a light sensor, so it doesn't go out of the arena and we won't lose. This is another motor that we added later on in our building, and it shoots these balls. We're going to have a competition on Friday to see who can build their own NXT robots.
And we fight each other in an arena. SPEAKER 3: So the main objective of the competition is to make your SumoBot the last one standing in the arena. SPEAKER 2: Oh, we're going to win because we have a shooter that nobody else has, and we have shield in the front and the back.
And I could barely push our robot away, so I don't know how their robots are going to. SPEAKER 3: Yeah, they don't know what's coming at them. SPEAKER 1: Sumo! [LAUGHTER] SPEAKER 1: OK.
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