It was a beautiful sunny crisp morning when everyone arrived at the Future Technology Centre (FTC) attached to the Portland Building at the University of Portsmouth. We set up base at our designated area where there were table and chairs and space to store our spare laptops, Lego, coats and bags.
It was fun to see the other teams arriving as they were all shapes and sizes, tall and short from different schools but the atmosphere was excited. We were all tense not knowing what was going to happen.
At 9.30am, the six teams were called into the lecture auditorium where David Hill gave an introductory talk explaining what would happen during the day. It was going to be busy but AgileSupernova were as ready as we were going to be as we had been preparing for this Tournament since September 2018.
Then back to our base to get ready for the judging. Firstly, we went to the area to discuss our Robot Design. This is where you explain to the judges how and why you designed your Robot, what it did, you describe the missions that you tackled and discuss the attachments that you built. The judges asked the team to run a mission as an example to explain the programming.
Secondly, after the Robot Design another group of judges visited our team to ask us to describe how the team got on together and such things as how did we allocate different tasks and how did we solve disagreements. This is called ‘Core Values’ in FLL.
Thirdly, the team showed our project to more judges. It was the most amazing full-length screen at the FTC. Charlie, Lucas and Poppy presented our project giving out samples of ‘Cricket Crunchies’ to the judges for them to taste. Our project was about feeding Astronauts on a prolonged space mission with a sustainable solution. We chose live insects that would breed during the journey.
After lunch, it was the Robot Missions. Ian and Josh were our main operators of the Robot with their slick change of accessories during the two and a half minutes showdown. The Robot missions went almost according to plan with the Escape Velocity, Space Travel, Crater Crossing, Satellite Orbits and Observatory Missions achieving full points. However, the Food Production went past green and scored nil. Nevertheless, we were pleased overall as our three runs were very consistent scoring 98, 100 and 105 points.
With the activities of the day finished, it came to the final award ceremony. We knew already that we had won the Robot Missions as we were leading the other teams on the table of points. However, when the very last award of the day came for Best Overall winner of the Portsmouth regional heat, we were absolutely thrilled that we won. It was a great finish to a brilliant day and all our hard work and perseverance had paid off. Then off for Pizzas to celebrate.
Next stop Bristol in mid-February for the Finals. We cannot wait!!
