Our favorite missions of Into Orbit season

This season of FLL was an amazing one for our team and we had a great experience. FIRST came up with a great combination of simple to complex missions for the Into Orbit robot game.

One of our favorite missions was Escape Velocity. We loved how it could shoot up in the blink of an eye and land smoothly on the top with the launch of the hard striking pad. It was also one of the missions that was close to base, and simple enough to help us score 24 points quickly. All we needed to do was add some weight on the part of our robot attachment that would strike the striking pad, then align our robot with the south wall to go straight, drop the weight on the striking pad to launch the rocket and then come back home straight at full speed. Done! So, for this mission our robot attachment design was simple - like an upside down U, but it had 90 degree edges, and on top towards the left side, we put some heavy weight, like a rectangular, flat, wide surface area because that part would be striking the strike pad.

We also liked the Extraction model mission as it was simple yet high scoring. To accomplish this task, our robot had to remove all the four core samples so that they are no longer touching the axle, place the gas core sample in base and place the water core sample on the Food Growth Chamber mission to score 34 points in all. So, our strategy was to align our robot against the west wall, program it go forward, turn, then use a passive attachment to glide over the mission model, extract and collect the core samples and bring them back to base. The attachment design for this mission used one-way door mechanism. There are essentially two one-way doors, one loose one-way door in the front of the attachment, and a spring-loaded one in the back of the attachment. As the attachment glides over the mission model, the loose one-way door slips across the model, while the spring-loaded one gives the core samples a whack in the space between the edge of the mission model, and the core samples, therefore extracting them out, and trapping them inside of the little box between the two one-way doors of the attachment. The robot drags the core samples back to base, and we can then use the water core sample when executing the Food Growth Chamber mission.