STEM & Robotics Courses

To successfully advance at competitions we need to understand two concepts - how to reliably and consistently navigate the field and position the robot exactly where we need it to be on every run, and how to build attachments that would accomplish a mission model once we have reached it. This course is focused on the first part. The second part is the whole FLLCasts platform, but start at FIRST LEGO League with LEGO Mindstorms Robot Inventor. "Challenge" competition for 9-16 years old.

The goal of this course is to help you learn to program LEGO Robots using Scratch and make them behave consistently and reliably during competitions. As a language we use LEGO MINDSTORMS App Word Blocks which is based on Scratch. We look at a lot of concepts that could be used for FIRST LEGO League and World Robot Olympiad competitions - for example, how to follow a line fast, slow, in a smooth way, with 5 states. Also, how to align to lines, how to do double align, how to keep a straight line with a motion sensor.

Unfortunately, LEGO discontinued the robot series during the making of this course which is why it's kind of shortish. You could use the SPIKE Prime course for a more in-depth analysis.

In this course, we demonstrate and explain example solutions for the FIRST LEGO League 2021-2022 Cargo Connect competition. Just like every year, we share solutions only after the season is over. In this course, you will find examples and principles of building attachments and will learn how to program consistent and reliable robots for each mission. You can follow the course, and as you go through each mission, try to replicate the solutions to understand the programs and explanations. Upon completion of the course, you will have many new ideas about how to approach the missions in every FLL robotics competition and how to help your team score more points.

Before starting this course, we suggest you go through the FIRST LEGO League robot game guide

Two fundamental concepts are essential for robotics competitions: ensuring the robot consistently navigates and positions itself accurately on the field and designing attachments that complete missions once the robot reaches its target. This course focuses on the first aspect - precise navigation and positioning - while the second is covered across the entire FLLCasts platform, starting with the FIRST LEGO League with LEGO Education SPIKE Prime. "Challenge" competition for 9-16 years old

The goal of this course is to help you learn how to program LEGO Education SPIKE Prime robots to operate consistently and reliably in competition settings. We use LEGO Education SPIKE App Word Blocks, a Scratch-based programming language, to teach key techniques applicable to FIRST LEGO League and World Robot Olympiad competitions. Topics covered include different methods for line following, such as fast, slow, smooth, and using multiple states, as well as techniques for line alignment, double alignment, and maintaining a straight path using the motion sensor.

There comes a time when you need to program the robot to "follow a line, but if another sensor detects something you would like to stop, do some work, and then continue following the line". This is applicable to competition robots as it is applicable to real-life robots. 

There comes the State Machine Pattern. An advanced and very powerful concept that allows you to easily implement complex robot behaviours with a simple, well-organized, extensible, bug-free program where the robot could be in 1,2, 10 or 100 states and you will still be able to manage the complexity of the world around the robot.    

One of the most controversial topics when it comes to LEGO Mindstorms robots is how to make them move in a straight line. This is a problem that has caused a lot of confusion among teachers, parents, rookie teams and students. The robot makes about 2-3 centimetres error for every meter, which is about an inch for every 3-4 feets. In this course, I would like to discuss the different ways in which you can improve the behaviour of the robot and how you could make it move in a straight line with the help of the LEGO Mindstorms EV3 Gyro Sensor.

This course is designed for students, mentors and teachers that are completely new to LEGO Mindstorms EV3 robots and would like to start using them to learn, in classes or at competitions. It is quite different from previously built resources at FLLCasts because it makes no assumption on any previous knowledge and tries to introduce everything step-by-step.