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Los Altos Robotics Orientation, Training, and Competition Materials Archive

This is where Los Altos Robotics Orientation, Training, and Competition materials are archived.

If you are looking for something and don't find it in the 2006 Archive, be sure and check the 2005 Archive out because we included just about everything we did that year and are including less in 2006.

If this is your first visit to this page, then you can skip this paragraph. If you are coming back to figure out what has been added since your last visit, you may find it is more helpful to find the new items by looking at the 2006 and 2005 pages which list all of the files by name. These pages list the files sorted with the newest at the bottom. The 2006 and 2005 pages have the files listed with their dates and times.

2010 Archive

Announcements

  • August 2010 Announcement Flyer: The Los Altos Robotics 2010 First LEGO League Flyer (PowerPoint version) was used to advertise the availability of the FLL program to children in Los Altos and Los Altos Hills. Feel free to distribute it to anyone you think might benefit from seeing it, such as potential team members and coaches.
  • August 2010 Frequent Flyer Announcement: This shorter text only announcement was given to the Los Altos school district office to be distributed to the Los Altos and Los Altos Hills students.

Training Materials

2009 Archive

Announcements

Training Materials

September 10, 2009 Parent Orientation: Slides (PowerPoint version) from the Los Altos Robotics FLL Parent Orientation meeting that was held at Oak Avenue School. Thank you Michael Murray.

2008 Archive

Announcements

Training Materials

September 14, 2008 Coaches Training: Three hours of training for coaches, assistant coaches and team managers. There was material for both new teams and experienced teams.
  • Edmond Macaluso gave the opening remarks, summary of last year.
  • Gordon Elder presented an overview of the upcoming 2008 season for all teams.
  • Warren Horowitz discussed the benefits of the research project.
  • Gordon started the new coaches training with a description of what to expect and a minor amount on how FLL robots work.
  • Michael Schuh presented the coaching guidelines.
  • Mike Murray described team management.
Here are the slides: We did not provide much training on robots or software. With NXT, we feel even the young teams can figure it out on their own. For training, just create a mini challenge for them: go in a square, go close to wall without touching, sumo, etc. Then let them go.

2006 Archive

Announcements

  • August 2006 Announcement Flyer: The Los Altos Robotics 2006 First LEGO League Flyer was used to advertise the availability of the FLL program to children in Los Altos and Los Altos Hills. Feel free to distribute it to anyone you think might benefit from seeing it, such as potential team members and coaches.

Training Materials

  • September 5, 2006 Parent Orientation: Slides from Los Altos Robotics FLL Parent Orientation meeting that was held at Covington School.
  • September 10, 2006 Coaches Training: The three hours of training for coaches, assistant coaches and team managers was packed with lots of tips and information to get teams started on the right track. There was material for both new teams and experienced teams. Gordon Elder lead this session with a set of slides (black and white version) that he and Michael presented from.

    Austin and Travis presented robot building and programming recommendations and tips (black and white version) that they gained from their six years of experiences as members of several highly successful FLL teams. They updated their 2005 presentation to include materials on the MINDSTORMS NXT robot kit in addition to the MINDSTORMS RCX robot kit. Slides 21 and 22 have invaluable advice on Navigation and are worthy of posting for all to read during team meetings. There are two videos that are part of this presentation but do not play from the PDF files. The videos are available with the two links below. You will probably want to watch these videos more than once so do a "save as" to your local computer and then watch them from there rather than downloading them multiple time. Slide 41 is a 62 MByte video from the 2003 team Travis was a member of that shows the teams winning run with a relatively simple robot in the 2003 Northern California State Competition. The first 2.5 minutes show the robot run and the last 1.5 minutes show part of the awards ceremony. Slide 42 is a 40 MByte video that Austin and Travis made showing their team's complicated robot from the 2004 Northern California State Competition. They won the Directors Award with this robot. Most teams are well advised to create simpler robots. With this advice in mind, it is still fun to watch the video to see what six year veterans can do with LEGOs. Someday they plan on adding more to the video to explain what is going on and why they did things the way they did.

2005 Archive

Announcements

We send in announcements to Kathleen Acoff at the Los Altos Town Crier Newspaper. She said "the newspaper drop-dead deadlines are generally noon on Fridays, but if I know it's coming early Monday morning after a weekend event, I can usually manage."

  • October 16, 2005 Scrimmage Announcements:
  • November 19, 2005 Local Competition (Regional Qualifying Event) Announcements:

Training Materials

Competition Materials

This is where you can find the materials we use to put on the Scrimmage and Local Competition. The Local Competition is a State Qualifying Regional event.

  • Scoring Spread Sheet: This Microsoft Excel spreadsheet is designed for scoring both a Scrimmage and State Qualifying Regional Competition. A Scrimmage is a practice tournament without any judging. The Scrimmage has fun award categories like Highest Score.

    This spreadsheet has been developed and enhanced since 1999. It is easy and intuitive for people to use and retains all of the individual mission scores from every run made by a team. The "Guide" sheet with in the spreadsheet describes how to use it. The spreadsheet uses macros to compute the winners of the Local Competition event. They are not needed for anything else so the spreadsheet will work fine for most uses with out macros being enabled. Other features include the "Team Score" sheet which is included in handout we give to coaches on competition day to record their team's scores. It also has the "Awards Summary" sheet that lists all of the awards and lists what order the awards are to be given out during the awards part of the tournament.
    • Version 2.13, 15 Nov 05, version for the November 19, 2005 Local Competition at Oak School. Referee sheets for Oak Avenue and Covington Schools to be given to teams before the event so they can become familure with what the referees will be using at the competition.
    • Version 2.1, 25 Sep 05, has been updated for the Ocean Odyssey challenge on both the Scrimmage sheet and Referee sheet (pdf of Referee sheet). This version will be distributed to early users so that they can use it to track their team's scores during team meetings (use the "Scrimmage Scoring" sheet or the "Ref Sheet") and report any problems back to MichaelLosAltosRobotics.Org for improvements.
  • Scrimmage Certificates: This Version 05.3, 04 Oct 05 Microsoft PowerPoint file has the certificates that we will use at our scrimmage events. It is easily modified to add other awards by adding new pages or modifying existing pages. The main certificate background can be changed by modifying the "master slide" (select the View/Master/SlideMaster option under MS PowerPoint version 2003).
  • Local Competition Certificates: This Version 05.4, 10 Nov 05 Microsoft PowerPoint file has the certificates that we will use at our Local Competition events. It is easily modified to add other awards by adding new pages or modifying existing pages. The main certificate background can be changed by modifying the "master slide" (select the View/Master/SlideMaster option under MS PowerPoint version 2003).
  • Referee Training Guide: The OCEAN_ODYSSEY_REF_GUIDE_FINAL_2005.doc 18Nov05 document is the Referee Training Guide created by Scott Evans for the 2005 season. Scott Evans is and has been the FLL game creator since the beginning of FLL. It is very helpful for Referees and Tournament Directors to read this before a competition. Posted with Scott's permission.
  • Team Names and Information: The RegisteredTeamsV1p11_16Oct05_cleaned.xls file has the team names and other information. In the full version of the file, I also include the coaches' names and email addresses. I print the table out and post it at the events so that people know who is participating.
  • Game Description and Information Bulleten Boards: We have found it very helpful to have one or two bulletin boards with the game description and information and Local Competition event information. Often times I have seen attendees stand in front of a board and spend many minutes reading. I am convinced that these help teams understand what is going on and better enjoy the event.
  • Supply Box List: I have a box of supplies that I take to competitions. This is a list of the contents.
  • Volunteer Tracking Spread Sheet: The TeamListAndVolunteers_clean05.xls is what I use to track volunteer positions and volunteers for the Scrimmage and Local Competition. I draw volunteers from the team that I coach, other teams, teams from past seasons, personal friends, people from work, and from my church. The State Tournament organizers also helped provide volunteers for the event. I like to recruit people not associated with the teams as judges and referees. I may recruit my older sons as referees even though their brother’s team would likely be one of the teams they referee. I show eight judges. You can do fine with four; however, eight is nicer.
  • Team Handouts for Local Competition: The first two pages of the LocalComp_TeamHandout_v05p4.ppt file will be printed back to back and handed out to the coaches. I may print some extra ones and give them to the spectators. It lists the judging schedule, has the schedule for the day, and a place for coaches to record their scores. The schedules were generated from the output of the MatchTimes.perl script which is avialable below.
  • Event Schedule for Local Competition: The LocalComp_EventSchedule_v05p3.doc file has the schedule for the competition day.
  • Event Announcements for Local Competition: The LocalComp_EventAnnouncements_v05p4.doc file contains the announcements I will make at the beginning and the end of the tournament. The Head Judge, Head Referee, and others will make announcements as indicated in the file. It is really hard for me to keep everything in mind on tournament day so I try and write out what I want to do in the announcements and agenda.
  • Event Scheduling Tool for Local Competition: The MatchTimes.perl file uses Perl and Gnuplot to show how the team's competition and judging times fit in the day (MatchTimes.pdf) and to show which teams play which with error messages when team play each other more than once (MatchPairings.pdf). The big problem that this script addresses is how to schedule the teams so that they would have more than just a few minutes between judging sessions and competition sessions. While the script does not solve the problem directly, it provides visualization of the team schedules so you can more quickly solve the problem. As it is configured, it shows my best solution for a 12 team tournament where teams are judged during one of the first 4 rounds and compete during the other 3 rounds and all teams compete during the fifth round.
  • Team name posters for each table at competition: The TeamNamesParticipationAwardCommentsOakMailMergePrint.doc file was made from the TeamNamesParticipationAwardCommentsOakMailMerge.doc file and it uses the TeamNamesPostersTableOakData.doc file for data. As it says in the file, this form is for the Announcer or someone else take notes during the competition about what is unique about each team. After all of the matches, this person will
    • Call each team up
    • Say something about the team and or their robot
    • Ask them to place their robot on one of the playing fields in a fun position.
  • Team name posters for each table at competition: The TeamNamesPostersPrintOak.doc file has the posters for putting on the team tables. It was created from the TeamNamesPostersOakMailMerge.doc file and again uses the TeamNamesPostersTableOakData.doc file for data.
  • Scrimmage Event Plan from 2001: Back in 2001, I created a Scrimmage Event Plan with the idea that others might use it to put on simple scrimmage events. It still has some useful ideas so I have included it here.
  • Dean Bio: I like to post this Dean Kamen bio at our events so people can learn more about him. I also like to thank Dean and talk about all he has done in the opening remarks for each tournament.
  • Feed Back From 2004 FLL Season: I read through the FeedbackFrom2004FLLSeason_V1.3_04Dec04.doc file and found several good ideas that I incorporated in this year's schedule and materials. I think it is worth reading again just before the competition and plan to do so that morning.
  • Final Results for 2005 FLL Season: After the competition, I summarize the results and post them (2005 season results) so that teams can see the details of all the teams. I start with these doc files for Covington and Oak Avenue schools and then use Adobe Acrobat to add in the pages generated from the scoring system and other files.
  • Comments on judging (long) from MN Program Director: Fred Rose is the Program Director from the Minnesota FLL program with over 200 teams and he wrote these comments on judging after some of their 2005 regional qualifying tournaments. I have many of the same feelings, concerns, and thoughts that Fred describes in his message. I think it would be helpful if everyone took the time to read what Fred wrote and think about what he has said. I have immense respect for Fred and appreciate his contribution to FLl and him taking the time to write up his comments.
  • More Comments from a coach about coaching a team at competitions from a MN Program Coach: This is a coach's response to some questions about how to help a team deal with tough competition situations.
    • .
  • Judges' Guide from FIRST: Local and qualifying organizers with events posted on www.firstlegoleague.org can contact Nancy Paul at FIRST, npaul@usfirst.org, for a Judges' Guide, associated training material, and as a resource for questions about running an event.

Future versions will be posted as they are available and in time for our competition events. Email MichaelLosAltosRobotics.Org if you want to be notified of their availability.

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