We showed off all our interesting projects, and I was personally surprised at the size of the crowd we gathered. The winning entry stopped with the shortest distance to the wall. The professor was pleasantly surprised with how much variation and creativity he saw. Lego robots are fun to watch, and even more fun to build and program. Teams from all over the U.S. create a robot to solve a specific problem.
Local competitions allow students to showcase their solutions to the challenge.
The best way to find out how gears, pulleys, and wheels work is to play around with them. Similarly, you can learn a lot about writing software by writing robot programs and seeing how they behave. Making a robot drive across the floor is a lot more exciting than watching a computer monitor. The RCX is a small computer that can control motors and read sensor values. By writing software for the RCX, you determine how your robot behaves.