Instruction Guide: EV3 - Engineering Challenge: Cube Wrangler
This lesson ties together all the learning to date. The students must design, build and program a Cube Wrangler robot that finds, retrieves and stacks 2" plastic cubes. An image from a Cube Wrangler competition is attached below.
This "Problem Solving with Programming" pdf from the "Challenges" page in "NXT Video Trainer 2.0" discusses the incremental design. This approach of breaking a large task down, and then incrementally designing/testing one piece at a time is a great antidote to most students' compulsion to jump right in at try to write a complex program all in one step.
This Advanced Flow Charts PowerPoint describes using Process Blocks to design a hierarchical flow chart of a program. Each My Block in a student's program would be a Process Block in their flow chart. Insisting on a hierarchical flow chart as part of the Planning step before EV3-G coding (Prototyping) begins will greatly aid in the software design.
Cube Wrangler Challenge
This challenge specifications are laid out in the Cube Wrangler Task Assignment Sheet:
- This is a head-to-head strategy game
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A range of skill levels can compete
- from basic "sweeper" style robots that just gathers nearby cube
- to complex robots that are capable stacking cubes
NOTE: This game is based on the 2' plastic cubes from the 2013 FTC Block Party game.
Have students document the steps of the Engineering Process (restate challenge in their own words, identify related web sites, etc.) that they use in developing their robots. This Engineering Process Log Word hardcopy file may be used to document these steps in writing, or this electronic version may be used for a softcopy.
Conduct a double-elimination drag racing tournament (so each team races at least twice). This site may be used to create an on-line race bracket, or this one for printed format.
