Jousting Robots

We explored the complex, yet exciting world of robot jousting during fall session of The Bakken's Robotic Challenges!

The History
We reviewed what jousting was, when it took place, and how it worked. We took our inspiration from medieval jousting. The sport where two knights would charge one another on horseback with a lance (a long stick) in hand and try to strike, or better yet unseat their opponent. We wanted to see if we could recreate this sport with  robots.

(source: Baroquenz)

We created basic robots and learned to control them. Many of the students have either participated in this program before or had previous experience building and program robots. The robots were quickly constructed and mobile.  Even for the few students who have not programmed robots before, they did a great job of diving in. Working through some of the programming tutorials in the manual proved very useful later on for our newcomers.

Each student built their own robot. Eventually alliances formed and the most battle ready robots emerged, while other bots served as back-ups or were raided for parts.  Each robot had it's own personality and flare. In addition to each team building a robot, they were required to have a rider. So we used some plastic containers. Some containers served as the riders chamber while other turned into the rider.

The Journey
Once the first round of robots were constructed we found that they were not totally compatible, so we needed to establish some basic rules of jousting as they pertained to our robots. We kept our rules simple and adjusted them as the sport evolved. We ended up with essentially three rules.

1. Lance on the right of the robot
2. Rider on Top of the robot
3. Each robot should have 2 sensors
1. One to indicate if the the lance has struck another robot
2. And a second to detect if the rider had been up seated.

Rule number 3 required us to think through some programming. We used the touch sensors to detect hits and track whether the rider was still seated on the robot. We figured out a couple of ways to make it work, but the most reliable way involved the nesting of some If blocks.

Practice, Practice, Practice
Once the robots were operational and operating by the same rules we had many practice bouts. While the robots did not act as intended, information was gathered. Iteration and improvement is a BIG part of the invention process. It was fun to watch the robots get refined and tweaked as we figured out what strategies and technology worked best.

Sometimes that took a couple of tries, but that is part of the fun. You know what they say... if at first you don't succeed, reposition your robots.


Some of the students came up with some excellent additions to their robots. I really like the way many of the students added lights or sounds and connected them so there was some feedback provided by the robot when it struck the target or was struck by a lance.

Tournament
Once the robots were ready, we arranged a little tournament. In order to have a tournament we needed to be able to establish a clear victor. We decided to create a scoring system.

3 points for a knock off, where the rider is unseated from the robot
2 points for a registered hit
1 point for a draw

Each match consisted of three bouts and the victor was determined by the total score for the match.

I was really impressed with sportsmanship and enthusiasm share by the students.  Regardless of who won everyone had a good time.

LEGO Robotics Halfway Update Winter 2015

We’re halfway through our winter LEGO Robotics classes here at the Bakken Museum, and we’re starting to really get into the meat of what we can do with these robots.  The first week we built them, and learned how to design simple programs right on the robots themselves.  We did some simple challenges at the end of the class like driving the robot in basic shapes, such as a square or a circle.

This last Saturday, we got out the laptops and learned to program our robots with the help of computers.  For this we bumped up the difficulty of the challenges, and the robots had to make their way through a simple maze, or use sensors to either interact with or avoid their surroundings.

For this upcoming Saturday we’re going to learn how to more effectively use the sensors for what we want the robot to do in order to get ready for the big show at the end of class next week.  At the big show, family and friends will be able to see the results of all our work as we demonstrate our skills by having the robots safely drive themselves along a "road" in the morning, and with a sensor-dependent parade in the afternoon.  We’ll give more details on those in another post.

We have another round of our LEGO Robotics class starting up in the spring on April 25^th, so check out the museum’s website for information on how to sign up.  http://www.thebakken.org/youth-programs

LEGO Robotics: Spring Wrap Up

The Spring session of the LEGO Robotics workshop was a great success. Both the morning and afternoon classes produced some excellent robots.

A couple of our robots were playing a game of golf, but they were trying to only hit the red ball. The robot approaches the ball on the stand and if the ball was blue it would back away, if it was red it would hit the ball.

 
Programming robots is fun!


This robot is easily startled. When he rolls over the pressure pad, it completes a circuit setting off a buzzer. Whenever the robot hears a loud sound it swings into reverse.
 
This robot controls a red light and green light by driving over pressure pad switches!

 The afternoon workshop focused on the theme of Artbot or Arcadebot. The robots either created art in a visual or auditory form or the robots were designed to play some sort of game. A lot of the students found interesting robots on the internet and found ways to modify and improve on them.

A selection of  Arcadebots:

Remote Controller grabber

A customized robot controlled via bluetooth

A ball shooter


 The Artbots:

LEGO Robotics - Spring 2014: Mid Session Progress

We are over half way through our spring session of LEGO Robotics here at The Bakken Museum. We have two classes of students working hard on some interesting robotics projects. We wanted to share what we have been up to during these last few weeks and what we have coming up in the remaining time.

Introduction to LEGO Robotics - Morning Workshop

In our introductory class, we have learning the basics of robot design, construction, and programming. In the first week of class we began building the basic robot that we have come to love here at the museum. Each robot is assembled by a team of two students. One student assembles as the other collects pieces and then they switch roles until the have a fully functional robot. The students have done a great job helping each other out when they get stuck or need some help. By the end of the first day, pretty much everyone had a working robot.

On the second day we focused our attention on how to make our basic robot move around. We were utilizing the on-robot programming. This allows us to give the robot five instructions to respond to. We rotated through six challenge stations to help us practice computational thinking. Some of these stations included driving in a square, going exactly six feet and stopping, and going over a ramp. The second half of the day was spent investigating and experimenting with sensors. The NXT robots we use has four different sensors, each can be used to gather more information about the surroundings. We used those sensor to make the robots interact with the sounds, lights, and objects in our environment.

We learned that there are some limitations to what we can do with the programming style we practiced last week, so this week we learned to use the computer as a programming tool. This gives us a more power and flexibility to control the robot. To start off we focused on making the robot move along a specific path, a maze. The goal was to give the robot instructions to move through the maze from the starting line to the finish line with no human interaction. It was a tricky maze with many turns. Few students finished the whole things, but everyone made a good effort and made good progress during our workshop. It was a good reminder that just because it’s simple doesn't mean it easy.

Our fourth week started out with some circuit exploration. We used batteries, bulbs, and wires to make some interesting circuits. There was a wide range of skills in our group. It was great to see students sharing knowledge with their fellow students. Next, we brainstormed how we could make our robots interact with circuits. The rest of the day was spent working on special challenges designed by the students to be revealed at our Big Show on Saturday May 17th at 11:30. These challenges will be what we focus on for the rest of the session. I hope you will join us to see what these creative robot engineers are working on so diligently.

Lego Robotics - Winter 2014

We are now over half way through this session of LEGO Robotics. Both the morning and afternoon classes are make impressive progress. In our remaining two weeks each group is working on specific challenges.

Our Introduction to LEGO Robotics class in the morning works in teams, two students for each robot.

 Each team has built their robot, practiced basic programming, and have experienced using the computer to try more advanced programming techniques and concepts. The first week we did thought provoking investigation to see how wheel size affected our robots motion. This week we started with some circuit exploration, figuring out how basic circuits work and how to control them with a switch. Now we are building and program robots for specific student designed challenges. Some groups are working on making their robot interact with a custom made pressure pad. Other groups are preparing their robots for battle. Join us at the Big Show on Saturday March 1st to see these robots in action.

In the afternoon our Robot Challenges students have also been busy. In this group each student has their own robot to work with so they can really customize their robot and tinker with its design and programming.

The first week was spent constructing the a basic robot. The second week was spent investigate sensors and basic programming. In the third we constructed a basic maze for our robots and then programmed the robots to successfully travel through the maze.

In our fourth week the big challenge was introduced. The challenge for the afternoon group involves building a snow plowing robot. For our scenario the snow will be represented by balls of different sizes and shapes. So far we have been experimenting with different plow designs and trying to utilize the skills we practiced to get our robots through the maze to help us through the new course. We have run into some challenges as well such as trying to find the right balance of making a plow that is big enough to capture most of the "snow" but not so big that is catches on the curb and knocks the robot off course. Challenges we will going to work on and refine over the next two weeks.

Lego Robotics Wrap-up

The fall 2013 session of Lego Robotics ended with a bang at the Bakken. The amount of growth seen in all the students was truly impressive - we can't wait to see what these future engineers might build next.

In the morning session, each pairing had two challenges. The first was to program their robot to complete a maze and end on a pressure switch that each of them made. This task is a great example of how looks can be deceiving - everyone thinks it's easy when the challenge is introduced, but it actually requires each group to use all the skills that they've learned together in a very precise manner. Nonetheless, the whole group did an awesome job battling through to the end! The pride they felt when their robots made it onto their switches for the first time was well deserved, and fun to watch!

The second challenge that each group showed to their families during the Big Show was one of their own choosing. We had several golf shot challenges, a rodeo robot, and even a very fine dance performed. The creativity and ingenuity showed here was trumped only by the persistence in seeing their ideas brought to life.

The afternoon group had a completely different set of challenges. Since this group is a little older, they got to decide as a group what the theme for their robots and challenges should be. After going through many ideas, like a relay race, sumo wrestling, construction site, and a robot dance party (dancing was very popular), the group eventually decided on Robot Olympics as our theme. Each builder came up with their own design for a robotic event, then designed and programmed the robots from scratch. The results were extremely cool. We had a bipedal discus throwing robot next to a quadrupedal cat robot that lit up our Olympic torch.

 

There was a soccer kicking robot and a hockey shooting bot. We even had a fishing robot that used magnets to catch the illusive paper-clipped mouth bass. The horseback riding robot required some very challenging programming to get both horizontal and lateral movement to mimic a horse. Not only were the parents impressed, I'm pretty sure that the kids impressed themselves.

Overall, it was another great session of robot building and programming that reinforced the idea that kids can make some amazing things with the right tools and an engineer's outlook.

Lego Robotics - Oct. 26, 2013

Marking out distances for a golf-shot.

We're three weeks into the the fall 2013 Lego Robotics workshop and things are getting animated! Both classes have successfully advanced passed the basic programming phase and are advancing onto some really exciting projects.

In the morning session, the group has started working on their own original programs that they will create and demonstrate. They have also been given the challenge of a maze that they will have figure out how to program their robots through to land on a pressure-switch that they made themselves.

The older kids in the afternoon session decided on their group theme this week (it's a surprise) and have started building designing and building original robots around that theme. They will then have to test, refine and program their robots while figuring out the best way to present them for the big show.

Speaking of the Big Show, it's in two weeks! Information will be available at the next session on Saturday.

Collaborating on their maze program.

One programs while the other tweaks the robot - very efficient.