Robotics Club Happenings!

What Have We Been Doing?

During the last two week's club meetings, we have been executing the Brainstorming and Building & Testing Prototype Stages of the Design Process.

Robot Builders figured out clever ways to bring wheeled locomotion to their robots while absorbing and applying the learned knowledge about the relationships of the circumference of wheels to distance traveled. While these terms are used in Geometry, in a traditional educational setting, here we applied multiple disciplines to achieve actual movement of a robot to a specific distance (4-feet).

Multiple Disciplines

In Geometry, one may measure the diameter of a two-dimensional circle, multiply by pi (3.14….) to learn the circumference of the circle. One may then use division to see how many rotations will be needed to reach a certain distance. However, in Engineering, one will also need to select the proper width, tread, and suitability of a tire to specific terrains to accomplish that distance. During the last two club meetings, Robot Builders quickly found out that calculations cannot be our only measure of understanding, but EXPERIENCE of what can go wrong on this plane of 3-dimensional reality is just as important as the academic discipline.

Once all teams were successful in propelling their robots exactly 4-feet, we then learned about the considerations of displaying the distance on their robots. This included understanding the different functions of the motor sensors that can potentially sense a 1-degree rotation of their axles, and how we can use math functions to translate that axle movement back into the distance. We also learned how to take that dynamic data and input it through “data lines” to our “text creation” programming blocks to be stitched together with the units of measure in “inches”. And finally, builders learned how to feed all of that text into the robot’s display for everyone to see.

Here is the sample code that we focused on, to learn the functionality of each block:

The Motor Control and Display blocks are in Green. The Yellow blocks are the Motor Sensor Controls. The Red blocks are the Mathematical Algorithm block and the Text Creator block.

Rotations * Circumference = Distance

Distance divided by Time = Speed

Next week, we will be learning about the variables associated with speed. The next club meeting is March 8, 2019. We will not have a club meeting on March 15, 2019 (this is Spring Break).

- Loren Marvin, Robotics Instructor