Hello,


We received permission from the admin of the forum to post this. This post has been made with the assistance of an adult.


We are team 1107, a robotics team of boys aged 9 to 14 years old. We compete in the first lego league (FLL). This years theme was "Nature's Fury" Prepare, Stay Safe, Rebuild" and was about emergency preparedness.


As part of this theme we were supposed to come up with an "innovation" and share the news about what we came up with. We decided to share the news by posting in this forum.


Our innovation was to use basic robotics parts, and some 3D printed parts, to turn a Power Wheels toy into a robot that could follow a wildfire firefighter. We interviewed a firefighter and he said that the weight he had to carry was really a lot, and on PBS Nova they talked about how firefighters have to carry 168 lbs or more.


So we thought that someone could use simple robot parts and some 3D printed parts to convert something that they already owned into a robot that could follow you with extra gear.



(Parents note: Obviously, firefighters wouldn't use power wheels, but these are kids using what they already have).


What we found was for $500 in Lego Robot parts and some 3D prints, we were able to get our Power Wheels to follow us. The power wheels can carry over 240 lbs in our tests.



We would like to share the idea that for under $1000 volunteer departments might be able to use similar, better engineered versions of this to accomplish the same goal without having to spend ten thousand dollar on a robot that was specially made to do the same thing.


Thank you for allowing us to share our idea in your forum. If you would like to research more into the competition we are a part of you can go to this link:
http://www.firstlegoleague.org/challenge/2013naturesfury

We will be presenting our working version at our tournament soon. Thank you again for your time! Have a wonderful day.

Likely a typo but " PBS Nova they talked about how firefighters have to carry 168 lbs or more." is not likely.

But a great project none the less.

I wondered about that too. Regardless, firefighters do indeed routinely carry heavy loads - 80 lbs is not at all uncommon. A little robot/drone help would be very nice. I have fond memories of Becky, the Fire Mule, who carried a lot of our stuff for us years ago.