LEGO Education SPIKE Prime

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:

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.

In this video tutorial, we demonstrate a full run for the FIRST LEGO League 2024-2025 SUBMERGED challenge, completing all missions in a single sequence. Each mission is shown individually beforehand, with close-up views of how the attachments work and the principles behind their design. All attachments are pinless, making them quick to change during the run, though aligning and loading the robot still requires practice. The strategy involves moving from one base to the other while accomplishing as many missions as possible, including retrying those close to base when needed.

While the complete run takes longer than the official 2.5 minutes, the focus here is on demonstrating reliability, consistency, and the trade-offs between time and scoring points. In some cases, missions are skipped to focus on higher-value tasks, but in this run, we aim to complete them all. The result is a strong performance that comes close to the maximum possible score.

For today’s lesson, the motor should be in its default 0-degree position during construction. You can verify this using the marker on the motor.

At the end of the lesson, the students will take part in a small competition. To prepare for it, they will need a race track.

Place two objects on the floor (these can be LEGO models or any other suitable items) that the students will use as markers while programming their robots to drive in a figure-eight pattern around them. Mark a starting line at the beginning of a straight section of the track.