FLL 2022: Push, Lever, Collect, Pull, Align - 10 out of 10 on 5 missions with Chain Monster box robot accomplishing M10, M12, M05, M04, M03 Pro Preview

In this video tutorial, we accomplish the FIRST LEGO League 2022 - 2023 SUPERPOWERED missions: five missions in a row. These are all five missions, and this is a 10 out of 10 tutorial with the Chain Monster box robot. We have the Smart Grid, we have the Water Reservoir, we have the Energy Storage, we have the Power Plant, we have the Solar Farm. Five missions in a row. We've seen them in the tutorial. Now, let's see a 10 out of 10. Now, this is a long tutorial. The initial version is about 18 minutes long. We'll try to speed it up during the editing phase, but we really want you to see how this robot is accomplishing the missions and what's the consistency and the reliability of this robot. And that it's really possible to get to five missions and do it in a consistent and reliable manner. We'll try to speed it up at a few places where we put the mission models back into the initial position and where we clean the field. But apart from that, let's take a look at how the robot works. This was the first accomplishment, and this was how we accomplished it, how we demonstrated it in the tutorial. It takes about a minute. It takes about a minute to accomplish these five missions. So, if you have these five missions for a minute, and you have another five missions for another minute, this means that you can practically do 10-15 missions in two minutes and a half. So, these here are the places that we're going to speed up. The places where we put the mission models in their initial position. This is the thing that will speed up. But apart from this, let's focus on the robot. We align. We've discussed that it's very important to align the robot. When aligning the robot, it's important because in this way, you have a consistent behavior of the robot. You have some consistency because, otherwise, you are starting the robot from a different place each time, and it's difficult to have a consistent robot. First, the strategy. Our strategy is to go for the Power Plant, and use a lever there to lift the mission model. Then, we have a choice. We take the Smart Grid, and after the smart grid, we collect the water units from the Water Reservoir. We reuse the same attachment for collecting the batteries from the Solar Plant. And you can see that it's a container that could be open and closed. In the end, we use the same principle for gathering the last energy unit from the energy storage. At the end, where we are close to the base, we just move and collect the last reservoir.

This was the speedup. And after the speedup, we are now again ready to start with the robot. Second turn, no, It's the third run. In the next few tutorials, we'll enter into details about each of the missions. We'll have a close-up recording of each of the mission models and how we accomplish them. Because we understand: from here, it's difficult to see the exact way in which the attachment works, but you get a general idea. Yes, you can see how it collects. But sometimes it's worth having some additional recordings of the additional mission models. Not the additional, but the mission models as a close-up.

As a strategy, we had these same missions accomplished in a different way by the Kriket box robot. So, there is an additional video for the Kriket box robot, and I'll tell you more about it after the speedup here.

Speedup is complete. Now, we start the robot. And I was telling you about the Kriket box robot. For this robot, we had four runs, I think, or three, and all of them were completed successfully. No mistakes there. We had a different strategy that's quite interesting to see. The Kriket box robot approached the missions in a slightly different way, from a different angle. I advise you to also go find the 10 out of 10 for the Kriket box robot that also completes some of these missions. But it's a different strategy. Not all the missions are the same. One of the very challenging things about the Chain Monster robot, and one of the things that you can really learn from this tutorial, and from the programming, is how we manage to align the robot in this tight space between the mission models. Because you can see that it's a large robot. It's a large robot, but we managed to somehow align it, and accomplish the missions. Next speedup. Let's do it. Speedup complete. It's again time to start the robot for its next run. No mistakes. Five missions in a row, and we haven't made any mistakes with this robot. So, all the missions are completely and fully accomplished.

A few interesting things about this robot. You can see that there is an attachment at the front, at the back, and on the side of the robot. It's a multi-purpose attachment. It's a single frame. On this frame, we have three or four different attachments for the five missions that we have to accomplish. We have this container at the front.

There was a mistake here. The mistake occurred because one of the water reservoirs got stuck between the wheels. It happens once in 20-30 starts of the mission. It could happen, but it's very rare. So, this messed up this run. That's why we have three runs on the FIRST LEGO League competitions. Because, if we mess up one of the times, we can try again a second or a third time. Now, let's speed it up again.

Next run. On the next run, we again continue with the same missions. What I was telling and sharing in the video is the following: It's a complex, multi-purpose attachment. We have a couple of those at FLLCasts that would give you an idea about how to build these attachments. What's interesting about the multi-purpose attachments is that you should have some frame because you need to be able to put four attachments at the same time on the robot. When you put four attachments in the same time on the robot, it takes time. If you have a frame and all the attachments are connected with a frame, you can just put the whole frame. We've done this a lot with the box robots - with the EV3 box robots, with the Spike Prime box robots. All of the box robots follow the same principle with these multi-purpose attachments. There is a frame. You first attach the attachments to the frame, and then attach the frame to the robot. Let's speed it up again.

Speedup complete. Time for the next run.

The next interesting thing about these multi-purpose attachments is that they are connected to the motors. So, on these robots, you have four motors, and you can use two of the motors to control the attachment. The other two motors, you must use for driving the robot. So, you have two driving motors. Especially, with the Chain Monster, it's interesting that when you move the motors, a few of the parts of the attachment will work. Because of this, you can see that it's moving at the front and the back. This is the challenging thing there. How do you manage to separate the different parts of the attachment? Because this is a multi-purpose attachment.

So, you want to control one or two parts with one motor, and the other one or two parts of the attachment with another motor. So, take a look at the building instructions for this attachment. Let's speed it up again.

Speedup complete. The robot starts. I was sharing that the difficult thing about these attachments is to figure out how to control the attachments with only two motors. Take a look at this attachment. Take a look at the building instructions. See how this attachment connects with the motors. See the principles we follow to manage to control the attachment with the motors. Find the other multi-purpose attachments at FLLCasts, and also take a look at them. This is a challenging thing, we understand, but once you get it, it's not that complex. Once you experiment with a couple of attachments, you'll be able to do it.

A couple of more runs left. Let's speed it up again.

Speedup is complete again. Starting the robot from the base. We have to do this speed-ups because, otherwise, it will be an 18-minute video and nobody will watch an 18-minute video. That's why we are speeding up. It takes time. When we have five-mission runs, it takes time to put the models in their initial position after accomplishing the missions.

Not a lot of mistakes with this robot. It proves to be very stable. For this, we are using the Scratch version of the software, and we've entered into details about the programming in the programming tutorial. Now, Scratch changes, and the Word Block changes as a software. And I'll tell you more about these changes after this speedup.

Speedup is complete. We start the robot, and the thing that I wanted to share is about the Word Block's versions. Now, LEGO is constantly releasing new Word Block versions, as every software should have new versions. These new versions somehow, sometimes, change the behavior of the robot. But that's not very important during the making of this tutorial. Because the idea of this tutorial is to share how you could accomplish the missions, and give you the principles of programming and building the attachments. Even if the specific program does not work because the software has changed, it's part of the learning to somehow try to figure out what has changed in the new version of the software, so that the program could work. Now, it will be great if LEGO could maintain backward compatibility for future versions of the software, so that you can just download this program, download it to the robot, start it, and it will work. It will be great, but sometimes this backward compatibility, I understand, it's very difficult to achieve, especially when you want to move forward. Sometimes, you have to move forward and break a few things in order to have better software for controlling these robots. So I get it. However, if you see the program, and the program is not working as expected, it's probably because the version of the software has changed. It happens rarely, but it happens. And especially for complex programs, it really happens. So, try to figure out where the program is no longer working and try to rework these fragments or get in touch with us on our channels that we have on the contact page. This is my advice there. Last run, we saw 10 runs of this tutorial. One run messed up. It was a completely random event where one of the water units got stuck below the wheel. That's why the robot couldn't accomplish the mission. But apart from that, absolutely perfect robot with a perfect attachment, accomplishing five missions in a row, 10 out of 10, with no mistakes.

I hope you'll learn a lot from this robot, and I'll see you in the next tutorial.