This year's Qualifiers were at Hammond High School, a Howard County public school, where we arrived at about 7:30, going to the cafeteria to set up our booth.
Our Robot Design evaluation was first, and we explained to a panel of judges how our robot was structurally sound, efficient, and streamlined. We also explained how we used the color sensor to follow a white and black line, and how we used 3 motors to earn a score of about 340 points. We maximized our points from the 'units' and we mostly chose missions that were in the general vicinity of the white home base, marked by a black line. If the mission we were attempting was far away from the home base, we made sure that the robot was as accurate as possible, and we chose some of the easier missions. We used lots of modular attachments, so they would slide on and off with ease, minimizing the amount of time it takes to attach and remove them. Our innovative design earned us second place out of all 20 teams, which is quite an accomplishment.
Next was our Core values, where we were assigned the task of using a set of materials to make a model that helps mentally disabled children learn while they interact with dogs. We used paper to simulate books