Details

Written by Robot Obedience School

Category: RoboCamps

Published: 03 March 2016

 

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At Robot Obedience School, students tame rogue robots, turning them into obedient robots, and we have great fun doing it!

Our students teach their robots to be obedient by drawing diagrams that form graphical programs. Programs are the foundation of the modern world, and are a crucially important skill for the next generation of innovators that our nation needs.

Children aged 8-15 are welcome. For younger children, please check out our Junior FIRST LEGO League program.

Our RoboCamp is designed to introduce new students to the LEGO® MINDSTORMS® EV3® environment. The RoboCamp runs for four days.

Prerequisites

Students must be able to use a desktop computer independently, and be able to work the file browser to locate files.

Students, Build your Robot

Students will be issued a LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 for the course duration. Students will start off by building their own robot! Instructions are provided for this exercise. MINDSTORMS is constructed using the LEGO Technic construction style, which is quite different from the bricks with studs building style that younger children are used to. LEGO Technic uses beams with pin holes, axles and gears to create drive trains. There are also electronic elements which are connected to the programmable brain!

Beginning Programming

 Students will bring their robots to life by programming them to behave autonomously! Students learn to program quickly in the EV3-G graphical programming language. We may do things like

• Bump around the floor
• Follow lines on the floor
• Play tunes
• Solve mazes
• Robot platooning

Students will learn about the following elements of the EV3-G Programming Language:

• Controlling motors
• Loops
• Reacting to sensors
• Using wires and doing computations
• Feedback systems
• Writing subroutines (MyBlocks)

 

Building Challenge

Students who have mastered the basics of programming will demand something more challenging. We offer building challenges to develop building skills. Students will use their kit of parts to design and build their own robots to meet a challenge.

Students gain experience with the modern LEGO® Technic® building, and once they have built their robot, they must program it in EV3-G to make it behave obediently.

Students learn that robots built to look like Dr Seuss' drawings don't actually stand up - structural integrity is very important. We talk about the number of degrees of freedom of a mechanism. We learn that using triangles make things stronger. Gear trains must be designed with the correct gear ratios. There must be ways to initialise the position of moving parts.

There is also the possibility for some more experienced builders to attempt to build a Rubiks Cube solving robot!

Previous building challenge videos: Cross the Beam and Cross the Chasm.

To keep improving your robot making and programming skills, check out our weekly RoboClub!

Who can come?

Children aged 8-15 are welcome.

Adults are also welcome, either as helpers of a paying student (no kit for the adult, free admittance), or in their own right as an adult fee-paying student, having robot kit and computer provided.

Previous Schools

There have been previous RoboCamps.

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Trademarks

LEGO®, Mindstorms® and Technic® all belong to the LEGO Group.