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.

Inventors Club Spring 2014 - Week 4 plus Meet the Makers

The last session of Inventors Club for the 2013-2014 school year is in full swing now.  As usual, we spent the first two weeks doing introductory group activities, and learning all about the tools and materials of the student workshop.  Now that we just had the third of 6 Saturdays, we’ve begun working on everyone’s individual project which they’ll take home after the big show at the end.  This last Saturday was also a unique day because in between the morning and afternoon groups we had a special Meet the Makers program, where former students presented some of their work to the current students.

On the first day of the session, in the morning group we played some getting-to-know-you games so we could all get a little more familiar with each other.  Then we did an activity to help with using drawings to communicate our thoughts to others.  In that activity, all the students managed to tell their partner how to reconstruct a simple collection of miscellaneous small wood and plastic pieces by drawing their creations from the top, side, and front.  Then, after being safety trained for using the workshop, they paired up and built their own simple alarm systems which we then tried to disarm in an attempt to steal the precious treasure inside.

In the afternoon, we spent the first two weeks making art machines which we submitted for Science Friday’s Art Machine Science Club.  Two of the results can be seen on Youtube:

We also had a Meet the Makers session in between the two groups this last Saturday.  We’ve done this before a couple times, but always had a mentor or professional maker come in to discuss.  This time we brought back two former students to show off things they made in our programs.  The two students are also a part of our Green Energy Art Garden team, which is pairing 5 students with a local artist to create an artwork which utilizes some form of green energy, and will be displayed on our green roof this summer.  You can follow their progress and learn about them here.

Now it’s time to work on everyone’s individualized personal project, and in 3 more weeks they’ll show them off, and take them home.  We’re all looking forward to seeing the results!