Bjorn, Matthew, Kieran, Zach, Nicholas, Thomas, Tristan, Nate, Oliver

• Project Title: "Marine Guard"

• Problem identified: People are unknowingly harming coral and other marine life by boating and fishing. 55% of all coral reefs are negatively affected by overfishing.

• Solution developed: We designed, coded, and published a functioning website for ocean explorers to use for ocean stewardship, research, and ocean protection where scientists and citizen scientists can identify places of interest in the vast ocean.

• Research and community impact: We interviewed a real marine biologist over a live google meet call for an hour and a half and corresponded with them over email throughout the season to get ideas and suggestions as we came up with our solution.

• We dedicated a lot of time this season researching the problem and learning about ocean exploration. 

We identified the easier missions first and quickly changed our mind about a few of them as they got more and more complicated the more we realized how many moving parts there were this season. The krill, the coral, wow! This back and forth took up a lot of our energy unfortunately and we only had 4 missions down pat by the time of the competition.

This year we had a "cook off" where we split our team into two mini teams and then we had a presentation about each of our robots the teams designed and then we decided to merge both of our ideas into one idea that we all agreed on. It was a fun way to get everyone involved and decide how to make our base robot this year.

For our design this year we really relied on the gearbox for our attachments anytime we needed to lift and pull.

This year (as opposed to last year) we decided that we all needed to do block coding instead of doing python because block coding is easier for everyone on the team to learn.

This year everyone learned how to code with block coding. It was slower than python but in the end, it was better because everyone got to contribute.

• Events attended: 

  • Regionals at Holy Family High School in Victoria, MN 

  • Sectionals at Prairieview Middle School in Otsego, MN

• Scores and achievements: 

  • Top Robot Game: 195 points 

  • Innovation Project Award Winner, 1st place!

• Memorable moments: 

  • Our robot completed a perfect run at regionals by accident.

  • We advanced to sectionals!!

  • We made 2 exact same robots so that half the team could code one side of the board and the other half could code the other half of the board.

• Oliver and Bjorn helped design and 3D print a holder for "Send Over The Submersible" mission because we only have one table and that mission extends to a second table! The design fit perfectly!

• All team members learned how to block code.

• We need to start building earlier next time.

• We need to set out a clear strategy for our missions before we start coding.

• We need to divide up the work more efficiently.

• We should make a tier list for the missions next year so we know which ones to focus on and give each person a mission to focus on.

• Half of our time should be spent working on the innovation project and half the time should be spent on the robot game.

• Goals for next season: 

  1. Advance to sectionals

  2. Advance to STATE! 

  3. Improve our project research

  4. Practice presentations ( have color-coded scripts for everyone so they know when to talk when its their turn. )

  5. Keep in contact with experts that we interview better and send them thank you notes.