Meeting #5 - 11/14/09

Down one team member the team discussed challenge selections again today.  All present have settled on Challenge B - DI-BOT.  The team did some brainstorming on ideas for this challenge.  The challenge involves telling a dramatic story about how robot technology changes a character's life.  The team brainstormed a list of ways robotic technology could change someones life and categorized them as good changes, bad changes, or changes that could be good or bad.  Next the team brainstormed a list of possible main characters.

Then it was IC time.  First the team did a performance based improv IC where we had a list of charecters, settings, and stories.  A set of these was then chosen by a role of the dice.  The team decided to decide how much time they had to prepare and how much time they had to present would also be determined by a roll of the dice.  They had some interesting scenarios for one turn they had Brett Favre in Iceland with a story of my dog has killer fleas.  Next they had Mickey Mouse on the International Space Station with the story being a day in the life of a body guard.  Finally they had Lassie in the Mojave Dessert with a story of my jump rope has come to life.

Finally we did a task based IC where the team had to knock over towers of bricks (see the photo album) using some random objects.  The catch was the team could not use "direct physical contact" with the tower (this is a restriction right out of Challenge B).  For the first go around they quickly decided throwing objects was the best course of action (which worked well) so I changed the rules that they couldn't throw objects, they then got a little more creative and used some wind power with some of the objects and did some "launching" of other objects out of a piece of old gutter and/or tubing.  Finally we changed it up again where they had to create as many steps as possible between the action they made and the reaction (knocking the tower over), this results in some great creativity with balls that rolled down platforms and were guided into the tower by funnel type set ups.

Next week is our last meeting before Thanksgiving, watch your email for attempts at scheduling our meetings between Thanksgiving and Christmas.