It’s free – the TOO MANY TOTES! game for Android devices – download at the Google Play Store.

The app was created by student members of the Glencoe High School FIRST Robotics Team #4488 “Shockwave” and was developed using MIT App Inventor. The Android game is inspired by the 2015 FIRST Robotics Competition game called “Recycle Rush”. In the game, robots must stack a variety of container “totes” and a trash can on top and relocate the containers to a recycle zone on the playing field. Students design, build and test their robots – weighing up to about 120 pounds or 55 kilograms – these are large, complex pieces of mechanics, controlled by an advanced system controller, with control software also written by the student team. To learn more about FIRST Robotics, visit the web site at http://usfirst.org

I am one of many volunteer engineering mentors to the Shockwave Team. This year, I was mentor for the applications software team, that has developed a number of Android apps (the game is the only one publicly available), an Excel spreadsheet (written in VBA) to analyze data and develop optimal strategies, plus another app written in Python to process text comments about other robotics teams.

The team’s Android apps are written using MIT App Inventor.