Story Design

The engineering design cycle and the story have much in common: the protagonist has a problem / conflict to solve despite obstacles and wrong turns along the way. We use language to tell our stories, but programming is a language too; its sentences are equations, its words numbers, symbols, and often unknowns. My FLL concept uses well-known stories from around the world. For each mission, the robot must solve the problem faced by the protagonist. In The Sword in the Stone, Wart must retrieve Excalibur from the anvil in which it is stuck. The Little Prince has been given a sheep to control the baobabs that threaten to overtake his asteroid; now he must protect his rose from being eaten by the sheep. To prove his knighthood, Don Quixote must subdue the Giant Matagoger with its four whirling arms, and Beowulf must evict the monster Grendel from the Great Hall without using any weapons. As 21st century heroes, we can make robots to help us solve our conflicts and tell our stories.