Message from Sunil Geness, SAP

Hello team, I am extremely proud of you in the manner that you have applied yourselves over the past several weeks.

Winning the research component of the Gauteng competition over this weekend is indeed an awesome achievement.

I wish you all the very best at the South African Championships in Johannesburg to be hosted at the the Sci Bono centre on 6 December 2008.

To Christine Paulig and the rest of the mentors and coaches- thank you for your support, dedication and motivation that you have offered this bright group of youngsters.

I am confident that they will do us proud on 6 December 2008!
Best regards
Sunil Geness
Corporate Affairs and Acting Marketing Director
SAP Africa
Systems Applications Products (Africa) (Pty) Ltd

Congratulations & Celebrations!

Dear Robo Saints,

Congratulations to the Research Quality & Presentation overall award! This is an achievement, which reflects the hard work you did the last weeks! You definitely deserve it!

Even more impressed me your team spirit. During challenging moments, when the robot did not perform the first 2 rounds, you worked as a team to solve the problems and achieved 110 points in round 3 which left you appr. on position 6 of 37 teams which is incredible!

Your performance brought you to the national SA competition which will be held at the SciBono Science Center in Johannesburg on 6th December 2008!

Good luck … (one step further to Atlanta or Copenhagen… *grin*)

Congratulations in addition to our friends the SAP ZAP-it, who came second in the robot performance and SAP Jinx Jinx who received the trophy for the programming!
In addition I would like to acknowledge the great results from my colleagues Paul and Lungile. Paul´s team SAP NXTreme defended their last years overall winner title and won the Robot Performance Trophy. Lungile´s team, SAP Dynamite`s were the best in the Research Presentation Category.

See you all on 6th December 2008!

Regards
Christine


To ALL the 1000+ FLL teams in the world

Good luck for the competitions and most important: HAVE LOTS OF FUN!

Enjoy presenting all results which you have been working soo hard for during the last 8 weeks!

THE SAP ROBOSAINTS

Competition 25/10/2008 Pretoria

Dear All,
the competition will be held on 25th October 2008 7:30 on the Pretoria Showgrounds Hall L.

The bus will leave from Building 1 at SAP Office Park, 1 Woodmead Drive, Woodmeat 6:15 am!

Please advice if you need transport to SAP. We have different options:
1. If you stay around Northcliff Mr. Albertyn can take you along
2. If you stay around Randburg or prefer to meet at school at 6:00 am, I can take you along!
3. In case transport so early in the morning is difficult for you, you can stay over at my house from Friday night.

Thursday and Friday we will have full practice sessions from after school till latest 7 pm.

SAP caters for lunch, but remember it is a very long day. So please take some additional snacks along or money to buy additional food or cold drinks.

C u tomorrow.
Christine

Letter from the Oakland Tech Runners from Royal Oak, MI, USA

After our creative weekend with tuning the robot and finalizing research for consolidation we have received an interesting letter from the United States, Michigan.


Hello-

[The following is a letter to your team from the Oakland Tech Runners from Royal Oak, MI, USA. We are seeking teams with which to correspond for the research portion of the 2008 FLL Challenge. We were told to contact your team. We are researching the effects CO2 (carbon dioxide) has on our local climate. We are looking at using algae as a way to control the excess. CO2.]

Dear South African team,

We are the Oakland Tech Runners from Royal Oak, Michigan. Our team this year is Trent, Devan, and Sarah. My name is Trent and I’ve been with the team for five years. My brother is Devan and he’s been with us for 5 years and our third member is Sarah. She has been with us for two years.

If you know the answers, would you please answer the following questions? It would help us with our research presentation.

1. If the extra CO2 in the air is collected in South Africa, do you know how CO2 from power plants, cars, etc. is taken care of, or stored in your country. We know that Norway and some other countries are starting to put it under the sea. Is South Africa doing that?
2. Do you know if the average temperature is rising in South Africa? If you do, could you send us some temperature charts or figures so that we could put them into a chart. If you want information about the temperature here since 1930 we can send you that information. If you don’t have the figures, do you know of a web site where we could find them?
3. How is the extra CO2 in the air making life different in South Africa than it was before this problem started? Is the plant or animal life changing?
4. What is your country doing to control CO2 production? For example, do you have laws that limit how much CO2 cars can produce? Or how about power plants?

Thank you for your help. We look forward to hearing from you.

Trent
Oakland Tech Runners

No Nelspruit - Going to Re-mainia instead :)

Dear All,

I was informed today, that unfortunately the farm in Nelspruit is not available. We looked at alternative accomodation which turned out to exceed our given budget when we add transport costs. :-((

In addition we currently struggle with the programming and still have to do lots of work around the research presentation!

Therefore, Jan Albertyn, Marius Buys and myself discussed an alternative, which will then allow also our team members, who could not come along to Nelspruit due to Saturday sports activities, to participate.

Alternative:
We will meet at St. David´s on Friday at 9 am and work till 3 pm. We will have our braai at the school and afterwards a LANing evening at my house (11 Meyer Road, Bordeaux) with a sleepover - therefore still bring your mats, pillows and blankets and if you prefer to camp in our garden, a tent. For the event, bring your equipment what you require. Do not forget the swimming costumes.

Saturday morning we will go back to work hard at school till appr. 3 pm and Mr. Buys will organize 'n pootjie.

I am sure we will have lots of fun!
Christine






SAP JINX-JINX Team from Nelspruit & SAP ZAP-it's new blog





The SAP JINX JINX send their regards! They are having lots of fun!
Looking forward seeing you next weekend!

Have a look at the SAP ZAP-it's new blog: http://zapitteam.blogspot.com/ It is worth seeing!
Their research is on "desert encroachment" - very interesting!

Nelspruit trial competition

Dear All,

the robot runs! The first two out of three consolidated mission programs start to mature. The robot collects items from the field and posts them to the allocated places and brings items from the base to the house or ice. Thanks David, Jandre, Jan and Dominique!

In research Gareth and his friend had another expert session with Mr. Wolfgang Paulig, chemical engineer, who adviced them on the chemical reactions and possibilities to take the carbon elements out of the air and smog and re-use it for: food chemicals, cold drinks and as products to provide to ESCOM to produce more energy based on our inventions from the previous week.

Jan has finalized the team logo which was well accepted by the team members.

We have 2 weeks to go! Therefore, practice will be on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday afternoon.

We will visit our Nelspruit partner team SAP JINX-JINX next weekend! The SAP ZAP-IT (our homeschooling team) will join us. Please ask your parents if they allow you to go!
Agenda:

Friday, 17th October 9 am - leave from St. Davids
Friday, 17th October 2pm - 4 pm Visit to the Nelspruit Air Port Base to visit the FFA who looks after field fire in the area and know a lot about climate impacts on field fire etc.
Saturday, 18th October 9am - 12am Team Practices
Saturday, 18th October 1pm - 5pm Trial Competition for the 3 teams
Sunday, 19th October morning Joint english church service with the SAP JINX-JINX team
After service we will return home to be back appr. 3 pm.

Liezel, the mentor for SAP JINX-JINX will arrange accomodation for us either on a farm or in a town hall. Please take your mats, sleeping bags, a pillow and a towl along.

I will arrange food for the days.Transport will be looked after.
In case you cannot make it from Friday morning, there will be a car leaving either Friday evening or Saturday morning in addition.

Please let Jan Albertyn, Marius Buys or myself know as soon as possible if you can attend!

Regards
Christine

Inventions - phase I

Hi All

After a successful call with Sudarshan and his father today we can be happy to have such a knowledgable assistant from India. Sudarshan will do research for us on solutions on increasing sicknesses (i.e. insect bytes, virus/bacterial infections or cancer) due to climate changes and for the impact of the carbon footprint in our environment.

Gareth started with a great idea to clean our air : a special car appliance to take the smog from the front car and from the air and filter it. - see pictures http://robosaintphotos.blogspot.com

Jan added a feature in the car air cleaner, a little fan which will generate electricity for a hydro car (a car which can run on a battery up to 30 km/h or with petrol when faster). This won electricity will enable the car to drive up to appr. 70 km/h with electricity saving more petrol!

Dominique invented a special filter type where the surface of the carbon filter was increased by a large extend. Liam fine-tuned the pictures and drafts.

Then the team invented a special second skin, which is UV resistant to mitigate cancer risks caused by the increasing UV penetration through the constantly growing Ozon hole. It also prevents insect bytes and contamination by virus and bacteria. The team created proposals for realization and brainstormed some more ideas.














Here on the board are our focus area.

For next week we could look a bit deeper into the currently existing sun screen spray’s which are like a thin film on the skin, if we could not enhance this to the future needs?

For the smog and bacteria/virus in the air we will still look at special nostral filter.

Gareth crowned our creative day with a water pond which will clean the environmental air through evaporation, the uprising humidity will bind with the carbon dioxide in the air with the water leaving clean oxygen.

I am sure all of us will keep our momentum on the fruitful brainstorming activities to go into our invention phase II next Saturday!

Have a good week

Christine

Climate Challenge Solutions in India

Dear All,
The SAP Robo Saints are very happy to be in contact with Sudarshan Kumar (13 years) from Bangalore in India who will assist the team to research similar climate challenges in his community and how India is resolving the problems.

Sudarshan came second as an individual in a research competition where he looked into China's energy and climate challenges. He is a very knowledgeable child with a high interest in learning, sports and music.

Jan and myself had a lovely stay in India with him and his parents learning about their culture and way of living.

We will enjoy working with him during the next 4 weeks!

Christine

Research Links

http://climatehotmap.org

http://www.agu.org/pubs/eos.html

http://eospso.gsfc.nasa.gov/

http://archive.greenpeace.org/climate/ctb/update94.html

http://www.csag.uct.ac.za/worldcommunitygrid

http://www.csag.uct.ac.za/active_research

http://www.un.org/News/briefings/docs/2008/080211_Climate_Change.doc.htm

http://unfccc.int/2860.php

http://unfccc.int/methods_and_science/items/2722.php

http://www.uscg-iip.org/

The home schoolers visit

Areas of responsibility

Haydon Reysenbach -
Team Leader, Robot Build & Programming

Jandre Albertyn -
Robot Care, Programming and NPA Research

Liam Arron -
Pitt area and Presentation Props

Dominique Bastenie -
Technical Documentation, Research as directed by Gareth


David Golach -
Team Song, Team
Poster , Presentation Play, Team Banner, Clothing / Look & Feel

Gareth Ngwenya -
Project Research, Moderate Presentation Play
& Inter Continental Research Liason

Jan Paulig -
Team logo
, Presentation Poster, UN Research


Project Plan

Week Ending 4 October 2008
Robot Build & Programming - Mission plans in rough and combined missions
Technical Documentation - Approach documentation
Research - EPA, CSIR, Tuev, Wits, UN, hospitals, Finalize collection of information SWOT
Teamwork - Plan table, decorations, song, clothing, eye catchers, team logo

Week Ending 11 October 2008
Robot Build & Programming - Build
Technical Documentation - Parts and motivation for parts, test plan, document mission plans in ppt.
Research - Experts discussions, International community & info distribution via blog
Teamwork - Table decoration

Final trial run 16 October 2008
Test runs of robot and research presentations to school

Week Ending 18 October 2008
Robot Build & Programming - test optimization & photograph of mission
Technical Documentation - programmer documentation
Research - Displays, play adjustments and play photograph
Teamwork - Team banner & Pitt area

Week Ending 25 October 2008
Robot Build & Programming - Practice in competition conditions
Technical Documentation - Final document print and preparation, lamination and interview practice
Research - Practice in competition conditions
Teamwork - Team song

Research 1 - Reducing your carbon footprint

computer related tips for reducing your carbon foot print:
1. Go to the website http://www.blackle.co.za/ and make this your home page.
Blackle is a search engine website powered by Google Custom Search. It was developed with the idea in mind that the display of different colours on a screen consumes different amounts of energy. Further research showed that black screens consume far less energy than white screens and it was therefore estimated that a 'black Google' could save up to 750 megawatt-hours a year - A megawatt-hour is the equivalent of ten thousand 100 watt light bulbs burning continuously for 1 hour. The Blackle homepage provides a count of the number of watt-hours that they have estimated the users of Blackle have collectively saved.

2. According to The Big Green Switch, 8-10% of electricity used in the home is due to household appliances left on standby; where some appliances use up to 25% of their power when left in this mode and may produce up to 4m tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. By leaving your computer's monitor on overnight, you waste as much energy as it would take to make 800 A4 photocopies. Turn off your PC monitor at the end of the day and if you can, turn off the PC as well (http://www.indaloyethu.co.za)

Source: The Amazing Green Race Roots and Shoots (gogreenproject@gmail.com). 13 September 2008. Go Green Day 1. e-Mail to sjcrichton@worldonline.co.za The Amazing Green Race Roots and Shoots (gogreenproject@gmail.com). 14 September 2008. Go Green Day 2. e-Mail to sjcrichton@worldonline.co.za

Communication 1 - 9 September 2008

Dear All,

After our first two enjoyable sessions, I would like to thank you for your participation.

We will still have members joining us during the course of next week. I am looking forward meeting the whole team!

On Friday (7 September2008) we finalized our first kickoff – project scope, programming challenges and started with research activities and set a first date for delivery – a budget and a project plan for Saturday 13 September 2008.

We have we finalized the table painting and setup.

We found 2 hidden information on the playing field and are still not sure what it is supposed to tell us. Maybe we find an answer during further research?
*There is a Easter egg in the clouds (we could not find any reason for it though)
* “35%” written in front of the ice.

On Saturday another team visited us, the SAP ZAP IT. They are all home schooling and enjoyed the DNS center from St David’s! Thank you for having them.

Have a good start into the week and we will meet all together at SAP (1 Woodmead Drive, Woodmead) next Saturday from 2-5 pm.
Newcomers please join us early for a briefing at 1pm.

Mr. Buys and Mr. Albertyn will meet you as the practice times indicated.

Regards
Ms Christine Paulig

Competition Dates

24th and 25th October 2008 Gauteng Competition in Pretoria (held over 2 days)
(SAP teams will attend on 25th October)

6th December 2008 – SA Championship.

8th November 2008 – Western Africa competition.

TBA Open European Championship in Copenhagen.

TBA The European team will also attend the world congress of climate in Copenhagen FW: Lego League 2008

Team List

Facilitators:
Mr Jan Albertyn
083 501 7404 albertynj@stdavids.co.za

Mr Marius Buys
076 800 6983 buysm@stdavids.co.za

Ms Christine Paulig
079 490 9995 christine.paulig@sap.com

Members:
Jandre Albertyn
084 483 4855 albj10@stdavids.co.za; Sml

Liam Arron
074176 2237 liamarron@
icon.co.za; Med

Dominique Bastenie
073 404 0149 dominique.bastenie@gmail.com; Med

David Golach
082 449 2062 golach@icon.co.za; Sml

Gareth Ngwenya
076 865 3926 garethsoloude@yahoo.com; Med

Jan Paulig
0796948725 janop@hotmail.de; 011 326 4313 Med

Haydn Reysenbach

079 476 5255 haydnr@telkomsa.net; Sml

Practice Times

Monday 14:30 - 16:30 D&T Centre Mr Buys / Mr Albertyn / Ms Paulig

Saturday 13h00 - 15h00
D&T Centre Mr Albertyn / Ms Paulig / Mr Reysenbach