15 posts tagged with "robotics"

🏆Huge Congrats to Team Iron Lions (AU) & Kryptonite (IN) – Winners of the FIRST Tech Challenge (hashtag#FTC) Robot Game @ Asia Pacific Championship 2025! 🎉👏 I accidentally stepped into the TOUGH role: Queuer, a.k.a. The Runner 🏃‍♂️💨 as I returned to Macquarie University to volunteer at this epic event!

Equipped with my walkie-talkie 📻, I was on the move all day between the MQ Theatre 🎭, Practice Fields ⚙️, and the Pits 🔧, chasing down teams and making sure they were ready for their matches! It is not easy...

20 incredible teams 🌍 from Australia, New Zealand, Romania, USA, China, South Korea, UAE, and India – all bringing their A-game to the hashtag#FTC arena! 🤩 And wow – the hashtag#robots were sleek, smart, and absolutely mind-blowing 🤯✨. The design, hashtag#innovation, and hashtag#teamwork behind each one left me speechless. This is what hashtag#STEM is all about! 💡🛠️

✨ Special moment for me this time – my daughter finally hit the minimum age to volunteer 🎉 and joined me for the first time! 💕 So proud to share this experience with her. (Guess who she is in one of the pics? 😄📸)

Big shoutout to our incredible queuer squad: Shie (MQ Student) & Umar (Y9 Student) and me, led by the legendary Jo (15 years voluntering) 💪🔥. Can’t believe how intense this role is… I couldn't feel my legs by the end of the day 😅 (started at 7AM and wrapped up at 5PM!).

Huge shoutout to all the brilliant teams, coaches, volunteers, judges, and referees (Jo, Mark, Garry, Mary-Jane, Jim) 🙌 - and a massive appreciation to the amazing event organisers FIRST Australia (Lisa, Aaron, Will) who ran the show behind the scenes! 🎯👏

Wanna be part of an event like this, don't hesitate - jump in, volunteer, and experience the energy, teamwork, hashtag#GraciousProfessionalism (clap, clap, cheer!).

✨FIRST LEGO League Asia Pacific Open Championships 2025 – This Time, I'm a Judge! ⚖️ Unforgettable experience to be part of the hashtag#FLL hashtag#APOC 2025 again, but this year, not as a coach… as a judge! 💼💙

Over four incredible days, 59 amazing teams from all around the world gathered for this international celebration of robotics, innovation, and teamwork through the FIRST LEGO League at Macquarie University. And on Day 3 (Saturday), it was our turn to dive deep into the brilliance of these young minds. 'Sadly'🧐, Judges don't get to join the epic harbour cruise with 600+ students, coaches, and volunteers! We've got serious business to handle! ⚖️

These are what we celebrated and assessed during judging! All guided by the heart of hashtag#FIRST: Gracious Professionalism (clap, clap, cheer, 👏👏🎉) 🔹 Core Values 🔹 Innovation Project 🔹 Robot Design 🔹 Engineering Excellence, Breaking through 🔹 Rising All-star, Motivation

After 4 jam-packed hours of presentations, show cases and Q&A, the judges spent the whole afternoon in passionate deliberation process (yes, we were really into it, until 6pm, with closed curtains!). Each of us proudly advocated for the teams that wowed us most with creativity, problem-solving, and collaboration. 💬🔥

🎉 Congratulations to all 59 teams! You've earned your place on this stage, and you've shown the world what determination, teamwork, and innovation look like.

What stood out most to me? Seriously, these robots were awesome 🤖! Every team brought contagious energy, optimism, and passion, and it reminded me why I love being part of this community. 💙 🧠 Bold ideas 💡 Imaginative thinking 💪 Unshakable resilience 🤝 Unstoppable team spirit

Huge shoutout to the organizers (Will, Aaron), 28 judges (Melinda, Hester, Garry, Luke, Mary-Jane, Wil, Peter, Dawud), volunteers (Jack, and lots, lots of them), students, coaches, and mentors who made hashtag#APOC2025 such a magical experience. It's no small feat bringing together teams from across the globe, you did it with heart, precision, and joy.

So proud to be part of the hashtag#FIRST community, helping inspire the next generation of scientists, engineers, and world-changers. 🚀🌟

FIRST Robotics Competition Southern Cross Regional today - my very first time volunteering at FRC! It's the second day of the REEFSCAPE season at Penrith Valley Regional Sports Centre, and I'm already in awe of the ⚡ energy, 🔧 innovation, and 🤝 teamwork on display.

FRC is the ultimate sport for the mind ✨, where 40+ high school student teams take on real-world engineering challenges, designing and building industrial-sized robots from a kit of parts to compete in an intense, fast-paced game. But beyond the robots, it's about creativity, problem-solving, and teamwork, all guided by the spirit of GraciousProfessionalism.

This year's challenge, REEFSCAPE 🌊, is all about using engineering to strengthen one of the ocean's most diverse habitats. It's inspiring to see young minds tackling big problems and shaping the future of STEM.

It was a great pleasure to reconnect with old friends (Garry & Jack), see familiar faces, and make new connections! Exciting to witness teams like 'AI3' showcasing their AI-powered robot, an incredible display of innovation! 🤩🤖

A huge congratulations to Melinda for the 'Woodie Flowers Finalist Award' and to Mark for being 'Volunteer of the Year'! The awards are the perfect recognition of your dedication and countless contributions over so many years. 👏🎉

It's been a long day from 7 AM to 6:30 PM ⏳, but I've gained a whole new appreciation for the impact of FIRST empowering students and fostering a strong STEM community. Excited for the final day of the competition tomorrow! 🚀

Be a volunteer at FIRSTRobotics Competition's Southern Cross Regional like me in March 2025, together we will bring this epic event to life! 🤖 If you think robots and AI might take over the world, this might just be ground zero! ⚡

No experience? No problem! There's a role for everyone, and trust me - you'll find something you love. Lucky me, I got assigned to Field Reset role for my first time at the event ! 🚀 Can't wait to be in the middle of the action, helping teams compete at their best.

🔥 Curious? Check out the video from earlier season below, get involved, and join us! Let's make this an unforgettable experience for these incredible teams.

FRC Southern Cross Regional (Reefscape Season) 📅 March 7 (Fri) to March 9 (Sunday), 2025 📍 Penrith Valley Regional Sports Centre, NSW Australia

Good luck and see you at the competition! 🎊 🔗 Game & Session info: https://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/frc/game-and-season 🔗 Register as a volunteer: https://www.firstinspires.org/ways-to-help/volunteer

Thank you Will & Daniela for organizing and running the awesome events for us!

No longer qualified as an 'engineer' after my first FTC , guess I'll have to stick with 'Software Engineer' from now on. 😅

Volunteering at the FTC Nationals today Macquarie University was both inspiring and humbling. I walked in feeling confident in my skills and walked out realizing the FTC teams operate on an entirely different level. 🧠💻

My job today? Keeping the two practice fields in order. 🏟️ And hey, looks like I did an okay job at that! ✅ Meanwhile, the FTC teams were out there pushing the boundaries of what I thought was possible. Watching them work was like seeing a masterclass in precision, creativity, and pure technical brilliance.

A huge congratulations to the winning teams! 🏆 And a big shoutout to all the volunteers who made the day run smoothly - it's not just a competition; it's a community effort. Special kudos to Will & Daniela for their amazing work! 👏

In the new Submerged season of FIRST LEGO League (FLL), we are continuing our journey of using AI to help us learn, innovate, and make robotics more accessible to everyone. Our team took the initiative to build a chatbot using Microsoft Azure (with lots of helps from coaches) and publish an app that anyone can use, free of charge. This was a big step toward creating a more inclusive, cost-effective way for young engineers and coders to get the most out of AI.

One of the challenges we faced when using tools like ChatGPT is that they often require users to create an account, and there are costs associated with using advanced AI features. This creates a barrier for many students and teams who might not have access to these resources. To solve this, we built a free version of our chatbot that specifically focuses on the needs of FLL participants. We locked down the scope of the questions and answers so that they only relate to the official season documents and guides for the Submerged challenge, as well as coding instructions for the LEGO SPIKE Prime 3.

The chatbot is designed to be simple and focused, giving users clear, relevant information about the FLL challenge and the Python coding required for SPIKE Prime 3 robots. Whether a team needs help understanding the mission details or figuring out how to make their robot move in a specific way, our chatbot has the answers.

One of the key skills we emphasized this season is prompt engineering. The art of asking the right questions to get the best answers from an AI. While many people assume that AI automatically gives perfect responses, the truth is that how you ask a question can dramatically affect the quality of the answer you receive. We've been teaching our team and users of the chatbot how to frame their prompts clearly and concisely to get more accurate and useful information.

For example, instead of asking, "How do I code my robot?" a better prompt might be, "Write Python code to move my SPIKE Prime 3 robot forward for 5 seconds and stop." By being specific, users can get actionable responses that directly help with their projects.

This new chatbot, combined with prompt engineering techniques, empowers young engineers to not only rely on AI for quick solutions but also to better understand how to interact with technology in ways that enhance their learning experience. We're excited to see how teams use this tool during the Submerged season and how it helps them innovate and succeed. We hope to remove some of the barriers that traditionally come with using advanced AI tools and give every FLL team a chance to harness the power of AI for their robotic challenges.

We've made great progress in our journey to fine-tune an AI model for Spike Prime robots. With the training dataset and validation dataset ready, it's time to take the next step: setting up an Azure endpoint and integrating it with our local Python script.

First, we configured the Azure endpoint to allow us to send and receive data. This will enable our fine-tuned model to process instructions in real-time. By doing this, we can interact with the model directly from our local machine, making it easy to integrate AI-powered code suggestions into our Spike Prime project.

For the robot connection, we used a serial port interface. This allowed us to send commands from the Python script running on our local machine to the robot in real-time. This setup ensures that we can test and execute movements and commands on the fly.

The results look promising so far. The fine-tuned model has demonstrated an ability to stick closely to the instructions we provided. It seems to understand the specifics of the Spike Prime movement commands, offering more accurate code suggestions than a generic model.

Here's a glimpse of what we've tried so far:

• Moving forward: The model was able to generate precise movement commands using Spike Prime-specific syntax.
• Turning: We tested multiple turning scenarios, and the model successfully adjusted the turning angle based on the instructions.
• Combining movements: The fine-tuned model was able to chain together commands, making the robot perform complex maneuvers smoothly.

The integration between Azure and our local environment is working well, and the fine-tuned model is proving to be a valuable tool in generating Spike Prime-specific Python code. As we continue to refine the model, I'm excited to see how far we can take it!

Over the last 12 months, I've been amazed by all the developments happening in the AI world. From advancements in natural language processing to AI-driven coding tools, it's clear that AI is transforming the tech landscape faster than ever. With all the buzz, I decided to set a challenge for myself: to build an AI app from scratch.

I've heard a lot about is Azure's fine-tuning capabilities. The idea behind fine-tuning is to take a generic AI model and specialize it for a particular task or domain. In my case, I want to see if I can fine-tune a model to improve the accuracy of Python coding snippets, specifically for Spike Prime robots.

Spike Prime is a versatile LEGO robotics kit that allows users to program movements and interactions. While generic Python code can be used to program the robots, I'm curious if fine-tuning a model on Azure can make the code more optimized for Spike Prime's specific needs.

This will be my first time building a fine-tuned model on Azure, so I want to make the process as smooth as possible. Instead of trying to fine-tune every Python function related to Spike Prime, I've decided to narrow the scope and focus only on a few scenarios, such as robot movement and turning.

The fine-tuning process for this project looks like this:

1. Dataset preparation: Gather Python code snippets that are specifically tailored for Spike Prime, focusing on movement and turning functions.
2. Fine-tuning: Use Azure's fine-tuning service to train the model with this specialized dataset.
3. Testing: Evaluate the fine-tuned model by inputting generic Python code and observing how it converts the code to a more Spike Prime-specific version.

This is just the beginning, and I'm excited to see what kind of improvements we can achieve. Stay tuned as I dive deeper into the world of AI fine-tuning and robotics!

The team is struggling with writing Python for the first time! It's so hard, and we don't know where to start. Drag-and-drop coding in the code blocks was so easy, but now we need to learn Python and figure out what to do. The Spike Prime has some examples, but they're not so easy to understand for us.

We turned to ChatGPT for help. It does output lots of code, but it doesn't run on the app. Why? We asked our coach for help and learned that the Spike Prime only uses a specific set of Python, and the robot only knows some of the functions but not all.

It turns out that Spike Prime uses MicroPython, which is a simplified version of Python designed for microcontrollers and embedded systems. This means that not all standard Python libraries and functions are available. Some of the code that ChatGPT provides uses functions that the Spike Prime doesn't support.

This was a bit disheartening at first. We thought that learning Python would open up new possibilities, but instead, we hit a wall. However, we realized that this is just another challenge to overcome. We're now focusing on learning the specific commands and functions that are available in Spike Prime's MicroPython environment.

It's still tough, but we're making progress. We're finding tutorials and resources specifically for Spike Prime's Python coding. We're also experimenting with small bits of code to see what works and what doesn't. It's a learning process, and while it's frustrating at times, it's also exciting to see our robot respond to the code we've written.

In the end, we're hopeful that with perseverance and a better understanding of Spike Prime's Python capabilities, we'll be able to code like pros. For anyone else struggling with this, know that you're not alone, and don't hesitate to seek help and keep experimenting!

We've officially started exploring robot tutorials with the LEGO Spike Prime kit, and it's been quite the learning adventure! While Spike Prime is designed to be educational and user-friendly, getting started with coding was a bit trickier than I anticipated, especially for my young daughter.

As someone who's fairly comfortable with technology, I was surprised to find myself facing some hurdles, particularly when figuring out how to get the motor up and running. The block-based coding interface appears simple at first glance, but once we delved deeper, we realized there are quite a few features that aren't immediately visible. It turns out you have to enable extension blocks to unlock all the coding options, which definitely took us a moment to discover.

For my daughter, the experience was a bit overwhelming at first. Coding, even in a visual format like this, can be intimidating for a beginner, especially when you're still learning how different blocks function and interact with the hardware. But we're taking it slow, working through tutorials together, and focusing on breaking down each task step by step. Once we activated the extension blocks, it opened up a whole new set of possibilities. Suddenly, we had more control over the motors, sensors, and all the cool features we hadn't noticed before.

The good news is that Spike Prime 3 offers a lot of flexibility for different skill levels. As we continue exploring, I can already see my daughter gaining confidence. She's becoming more curious and asking questions like, "What happens if we change this block?" or "How do we make the robot move faster?" That's the beauty of this kit, it sparks curiosity and creativity, even if there are a few challenges along the way.

We're still in the early stages, but I'm excited to continue our coding journey. With every tutorial we tackle, we're learning something new, and it's a fantastic opportunity for both of us to grow together. Stay tuned for more updates as we get the hang of coding and start building some really fun projects!