Video tutorials

Did you know you can use the motors as sensors? Here's how!

There’s so much yet to be discovered at this dig site. Place flags to mark locations for further study.

Sites are outlined on the mat wireframe.

Deliver artifacts to the forum and choose a significant item to display. Consider what these artifacts tell you and what mysteries remain.

No Equipment Constraint: The mission model cannot earn points if it is touching equipment at the end of the match.

Reconstruct the statue to help piece together its historic significance.

No Equipment Constraint: The mission model cannot earn points if it is touching equipment at the end of the match.

An ancient ship discovered at the beach is at risk of further decay. Excavate the vessel without damaging its delicate structure.

Sand is considered completely cleared when the pull activator is past the line on the mat.

No Equipment Constraint: The mission model cannot earn points if it is touching equipment at the end of the match.

Your team has discovered some interesting artifacts at the port. Use the crane to excavate the site.

No Equipment Constraint: The mission model cannot earn points if it is touching equipment at the end of the match.

This ancient tool ensured that each item received a fair and balanced price.

Restore the market stall and reveal items that were once traded between the village and its visitors.

No Equipment Constraint: The mission model cannot earn points if it is touching equipment at the end of the match.

Empty the silo of the preserved food so it can be analyzed at the lab.

This millstone enabled people to process grain and gives insight into their daily lives. Due to its size and weight, moving this artifact could prove to be a challenge.

Ayyana’s team believes this forge was used to smelt ore and craft tools. Release the ore blocks and search carefully – one block holds a mysterious artifact waiting to be discovered.

Technicians may open ore blocks by hand to reveal the fossilized artifact when completely in home (see Mission 14).

Rebuild the structure to restore a vital part of the village where people once lived.

No Equipment Constraint: The mission model cannot earn points if it is touching equipment at the end of the match.

When parts of a site are too dangerous for humans, technology can help safely recover artifacts. Carefully extract the precious artifact from the mine, ensuring the site remains stable.

No Equipment Constraint: The mission model cannot earn points if it is touching equipment at the end of the match.

Ayyana the archaeologist is on a mission to discover every secret of the dig site and share what she finds with her team.

Your team’s minecart must pass completely through the mineshaft entry to score points for this mission.

It is not possible to earn the bonus if there is no opposing team or in remote competitions.

Archaeologists work hard to unearth important clues about how a civilization once lived. Shift and remove topsoil to reveal sections of a hidden map.

You’ll need special tools to clean and uncover buried artifacts without damaging them. Brush away sediment to uncover a piece of this civilization’s past.

No Equipment Constraint: The mission model cannot earn points if it is touching equipment at the end of the match.

So far, we’ve explored a line-following algorithm commonly referred to as duck walking. Let’s take a closer look at how it works and consider how many distinct states it actually involves.

In more advanced robotics programming, your robot may need to respond in three or more different ways depending on sensor input. Up to this point, we've created programs with only two possible outcomes using a switch block: a condition is checked, and the robot performs one action or the other based on the result.

But what if the robot needs more than just two responses? To handle this, we can use multiple conditions—often implemented with nested switch blocks or structured decision chains. In this section, we’ll explore how to build programs that go beyond binary choices and enable your robot to react intelligently to more complex environments.

When you hear the task “program the robot to follow a black line,” you’ll most likely imagine a program that works like this:

• If the color sensor detects black (meaning the robot is over the line), the robot moves forward.
• If the color sensor detects a different color (meaning the robot is not over the line), the robot turns toward the line.

In today's lesson, we selected a field that introduces a new challenge: it includes a skip section at a turn. To complete today's challenge, you can either modify the program provided in previous lessons or create a new one entirely on your own.

The next level of difficulty introduces self-crossing paths and bending lines. At this stage, we’ll create our first and simplest memory-based program.

For this challenge, it is assumed that the field layout is unknown before the competition, making it impossible to hardcode a specific sequence of turns.

The main difference between this field and the easier one is the addition of crossroads. Crossroads introduce a new level of difficulty that can be overcome by programming the robot to remember the paths it has taken, although there are simpler and more elegant solutions.

For this challenge, it is assumed that the field layout is unknown before the competition, making it impossible to hardcode a specific sequence of turns.

The main takeaways from today's lesson are how to alternate between following a line and performing other actions needed to complete the basic level of the line-following challenge, and how to plan your program ahead of time. Today's program will serve as a foundation to build upon for solving more advanced line-following challenges.

Then the problem lies in other external factors.

PID is the most popular method for programming line-following robots. It’s a bit complex, so this tutorial is longer, as we’ll break it down into steps and explain each element of the equation.

This approach to programming line-following robots is not ideal for beginners. Attempting to learn this as a first step in competition preparation may give a misleading impression of the competition's complexity and could discourage students from learning the necessary skills to compete in this category.

Wheel condition plays a crucial role in the performance of any robot, so it’s common practice to maintain your robot before testing and especially before a competition. Here are some steps you can take to ensure that any variations in the robot’s performance aren’t due to the wheels:

Securely dock the ship that contains the samples and artifacts your team has collected.