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= Welcome to the Camp Hill Robotics Club. =

= = Advisers: Ray Givler, Mark Ziegler, Dr. Sandy Fauser, Kristin Mooney, Angela Forsman

Contact e-mails: Mark Ziegler: mziegler@camphillsd.k12.pa.us

= Big Ideas, or Main Concepts = || = T**ips / Suggestions** = || I decided to keep the bots in the closet until I was done with "housekeeping" on the first meeting. That seemed to work well, so I'll repeat. --RG. || A few things from yesterday's session : This one was harder to complete. The extra time helped. The step by step instructions RG sent were great however the kids reported we did not have a few of the pieces again. No worries, I told them to engineer a solution. They did. I had a few kids that strayed from the project a bit (think they still had fun) but the goal of pulling something sometimes got lost in the "look" of the robot. We also need to review the programming skills again. Moreover, we need to keep working on the "working together" theme outlined in the club guidelines. Finally, we could not get the light sensor to trip a "stop" when it crossed the black line. Time flew by and the kids had fun again but in two weeks I am going to stress staying focused on the mission. RG, those notes you provided were priceless for me. Thanks! MZ The plus side of that is we know about the sensor prior to trying to do week 6, sumos, in which they will need it again. They likely causes are either a loose wire, polling the wrong sensor port, or the sensor being too far from the surface. I'll have my group to it as close as possible - like 1/4-1/2 inch. I'll also emphasize the old design adage, "Form must follow function." In other words, if the product can't do its intended function, it doesn't matter how cool it looks. RG A lot of variables go into the light sensor, but it turns out that doubling the width of the electrical tape line made is easy for the robots to detect it. We should use a similar double-thick line for the sumo challenge. RG || - The battery packs and other issues caused some design changes. I talked the kids into trying something complicated: basically a rotating helicopter blade for a lance. They pulled it off, but it took time. Also the blades got caught in the robot wires. We preempted the ramming by a little joust research. Attacking the horse was considered unchivalrous, so I added a rule that if they knock over the other robot, it was an automatic loss. One team cam up with idea to use two remote touch sensors, one powering each wheel. We managed to get the programming working for that. Overall, I think it was a successful week. RG ||
 * || = Challenge = || = Essential Question, =
 * Week 1 || **__Hello World__: Build a basic robot.**
 * Get it to drive forward 3 seconds, stop, say hello and display the names of your team and team members.** || **Q: What is a robot? Basic Lego building, wheel as simple machine, procedural programming.** || Had a great time. Kids had a lot of interest! Discussed, team work, the essential questions, had them do the simulation "program me to sit down on the chair, next had them build the "bot" Remember one of the black pegs is really blue in our kits; this showed up in building the back wheel. TIme goes by fast. Give them at least 10-15 to build bots. Computers worked great. I would also ask if any kids have experience with MIND STORMS. Make sure those experienced kids are on sep teams as they were invaluable when questions came up. We worked till 4:00 and could have used another 1/2 hour. Best, MZ
 * Week 2 || **__Tractor Pull__: Build a robot to drag a heavy load 1 meter on a clip board sled pressing the Right Arrow NXT button. Calculate necessary tire rotations for 1m assuming no slippage.** || **Q: What is friction? Pi, programming NTX buttons, solving for a variable.** || Updated this to make it 1 meter (2 meters+sled+bot won't fit on the table).
 * This requires a clipboard to hold weights, string (clipboard to robot) and water bottles or books for weight. Use a modified 5-minute bot ([] ) or the 4x4: []
 * The keys are power and friction (tires need it, clip board friction must be overcome). The kids should use all three motors and all four big wheels. They may even try six wheel drive with the smaller wheels.
 * Optionally, build a small Lego wagon to put under the clipboard to see how much more the bots can pull.
 * The kids should try multiple redesigns of their bot. If they have time, you could set up a robot vs. robot tug-of-war to see which bot could pull the other across a central line. --RG
 * Week 3 || **__Joust__: Program a single touch sensor like a remote to move left, right, and forward to knock a LEGO person from your opponent's robot.** || **Q: What are design trade-offs? Moving vs. fixed arms, programming loops, touch sensor.** || This was a lot of fun. Again, your kids will have to engineer around a few gliches. In other words, our kits don't match exactly with what Ray's plan spell out. That being said, the kids did fine and came up with some interesting final products. Kristen and I really stressed getting the basics done first and then jazz it up. We were able to also sit down with each group and dive deeper into the programming. I had Kristin's son Harrison help me problem solve some of the issues that came up. Now the jousting exercise kind of morphed into the sumo wrestling exercise...(they had jousts but they used them to "ram" the other bots. And as you can guess some were more apt at that than others. One of the bots was tall in structure and was no match for those that were close to the ground with a joust. We had some laughs with some of the collisions that occured. Finally, Kristin did a great job of bringing closure to it all by asking, "what designs worked and why"? "And if we had to design it again, what might we do?" Any interest in posting our designs and what they do to YOUTUBE?
 * Week 4 || **__Catapult__: Build a catapult or trebuchet to launch a LEGO red or blue ball when something comes within 1 meter (ultrasonic sensor). Program robot so say "Fire". Furthest shot wins.** || **Q: What are levers? Torque, counter weights, gear ratios, trajectory, programming sounds and ultrasonic sensor.** || The catapults with the gears and longer arms definitely performed better. The kids really liked the Angry Birds theme. RG ||
 * Week 5 || **__Mountain Climber__: Build a robot to climb the steepest possible incline, starting when you shout "Go!" (sound sensor).** || **Q: What is center of mass? Friction (again), four wheel drive, incline plane, sound sensor.** || Each team had a robot that could climb, one at better than 45 degrees. The supplied design is fairly top-heavy. We are having trouble with the blue kit - whoever has that in other sessions is really not organizing the pieces in tear-down. If kids are disengaged, my recommendation was to have them sort the technic pieces from the regular Legos that were donated - didn't get any takers. I set up the oval for the next meeting. RG ||
 * Week 6 || **__Battle Royal (sumo)__: Build a robot to stay within a black 75cm circle while pushing out other bots (light sensor). Play your team's theme song while running, using a MyBlock. Last bot in the circle is the champion.** || **Q: What are stability and force? Programming procedure calls, light sensors.** || There are a lot of variables that go into detecting that line - using the right port, having the cables connected correctly, the light in the room, the light from the windows, the distance of the sensor from the surface, and whether you are looking for ambient or reflected light (a variable on the program block indicating whether to illuminate the lamp on the sensor). We were able to get two out of the three teams to detect it correctly - didn't have time for the third. They had to lower the suggested threshold value to 30. Anyhow, it was a pretty good battle between those two bots. Wen didn't have time for the MyBlock idea - we can save that for an advanced class. -- RG ||