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

Winter Carnival

The winter session of Inventors Club began with a carnival. Set up around the room we had four carnival games set up for the students.

"Hey, wait a minute. There is something in this jar!" BUSTED We were in fact playing crooked carnival games.

Thus began our challenge: Can you design a tool that will help you win the carnival game every time. We even turned the process of solving the challenge into a game.

Each time the students tried out their device, regardless of the results, they got more materials. The game was designed to encourage the students to fail fast when prototyping and try lots of different solutions.

Our students came up with many unique and creative solutions to help them master our crooked carnival games.

Up Next Safety Training!

Marble Machines as Mechanical Computing Machines

We have been investigating mechanical computing machines during Inventors Club this fall. So natural we wanted to build our own.

Our Explorers group in the morning were working in teams to make a marble machine that would guide a marble from the top corner to the bottom corner of the board. The marble machine got more interesting when the students added circuits into their machines. When the marbles arrived  at the end of their journey they completed a circuit, announcing to the world that their journey was complete.


Afternoon Inventors were also working on the Computing Machines. Their goal was a little more intricate. They were challenged to develop a machine that would count the number of marbles put into the system or do something after 5 marbles were added to the machine.

Adventures in Mechanical Computing - Part 2

The more I read about mechanical computers the more fascinated I become. I wanted to share some of the stories and resources I shared with the Inventors Club students from the Fall session.

To understand what a mechanical computer is we have to think about what a computer is. I think of a computer as a machine that deals with information. You give a computer some input, the computer works with  that information and gives you some information back. If we think about computers in this broad sense we can argue that computers have been around for 1000's of years.

One of the oldest examples is the Antikythera. This machine was a complicated system of gears that would model the motion of the planets and moon. It even predicted eclipses. It is speculated to be the work of Archimedes. It is an amazing feat of engineering. There is a great  NOVA episode exploring this early computer and the story of how a group of scientist reversed engineered this complicated device. It is fascinating!

Charles Babbage often gets credit for designing the first modern day digital analogue computer. Babbage started first on a difference engine in 1822. This machine would calculate polynomial functions by subtraction. Before he completed his device he began to imagine a more sophisticated machine that could perform many more operations. This machine came to be known as the Analytical Engine.

Here are some fun examples of more recently constructed mechanical computing machines.

Binary Adder - This machine is not particularly old, but I still think it is pretty interesting.

The machine uses marbles to add binary numbers together. Each rocker can represent a 0 or 1. Here is a good video describing how it works. 

Another fun mechanical computer is Evil Mad Scientist's giant DigiComp II.  This machines uses marbles, or eight balls in Evil Mad Scientist's case, to do addition, subtraction, or many other computations. 

Our final example of a mechanical computer is a ball clock. In this machine each marble represents a unit of time. Once a minute a new ball would be added to the top of the ramp. Can you tell what time it is according to this clock?

Were you thinking 8:38? Give your self a back on the back. 

Adventures in Mechanical Computing

During the Fall session of Inventors Club we are exploring mechanical computing.

Most of the first mechanical computers were really mechanical counters so that is where we are starting. During the first two weeks of our Inventors Club, we are making a machine that can count marbles. We were inspired by our friends in the Tinkering Studio at the Exploratorium who have been doing some very creative work with marble machines. We took that same basic setup and applied a layer of historical context to create mechanical computers (more on that soon).

The challenge was to input data (a marble) into the upper left corner of the machine and collect the marbles in the lower right corner of the machine. For our older students we gave them the added challenge of "doing something interesting" once three marbles were entered into the machine. Many of our younger students also incorporated circuits into their machines as well.

Each team was given a set of materials(molding, dowels, PVC) to create the track for the marbles.

 The older students had to build the pegboard structure from scratch before they could do anything else. We just gave them the materials and a blueprint.

It was good practice building from a sketch and also served as tool training.

Henry got creative and found other materials from the workshop to incorporate into the machine. At the end of the run the marble activates a motor, spinning a propeller.

Another team collected their marbles into a bucket. Once three marbles dropped into the bucket the bucket would sink and the other bucket would rise.



We were experimenting with a binary digital counter circuit.
We were quite pleased with how well it worked! It gave us some new ideas that we hope to play with soon.

Drill Bits - A beginner's Guide

They are called spade bits!

We have many drill bits in the workshop at The Bakken. Over the years we have gotten pretty good at knowing when to use which bit. But we are always on the look out for good resources that we can learn from. Steve Hoefer's A beginners' guide to drills and bits is just that, a good resource. For example I learned that the drill bits that are relatively flat and are good for boring out a hole are called spade bits (I have been calling the speedbors, but I always suspected that was not the appropriate name). 

Hoefer's write up on drill bits share on BoingBoing is great. He coves the appropriate use and pros and cons for the most common and useful drill bits. I can proudly attest that we have most of them handy in the workshop. 

If you make holes, especially in wood, I strongly encourage you to read this article.

A beginners' guide to drills and bits - Boing Boing

Summer Camp Midsummer Update

Working on a problem solving challenge

The air is hot and muggy, the lakes are flooded, and half the roads are under construction.  It must be summer!  But of course the best part about summer is that it means we have our science day camp here at the Bakken.  Summer Camp at the Bakken Museum is where kids from 2nd through 9th grade get to spend the day at the museum, Monday through Friday, learning useful science and engineering skills, and using our student workshop to make their very own creation to take home at the end of the week.  In addition to working on their big project, they also work in groups on creative problem solving challenges, play games, build skills with circuits and tools, and make daily magic tricks to bring home to impress friends and family.  With all that we even find some time to spend outside getting our daily dose of vitamin D.

Working on a project

This week is not only the Best Days of the Bakken (our free Aquatennial 5-day event), but it also marks the halfway point for this year's summer camp.  As usual, the array of projects we've seen the kids create is nothing short of outstanding.  From card readers and candy carrying cars, to foosball and crocodiles, and just about everything in between.

Next week we're jumping right back into it with our all girls week, then it's just a few more weeks until it's back to school time.  In September we'll be starting up our usual school year programs.  Lego Robotics, Inventors Club, and Thursday night Open Workshop times will all be after camp is finished, with registration for Legos and Inventors Club opening up on the website soon.

Working on fun!

So far it's been a fantastic summer, and we look forward to the rest being just as great!

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!