Sunday, November 1, 2009

Robotics Update - Light Sensor

At our last meeting, the teams continued to work with the light sensor. They are now able to use the light sensor and detect the black tapes that we placed on the floor. The first challenge was to have the robot run around within a black rectangle, stop at the black border, then turn around and continue traveling but never leaving the black rectangle.
The second challenge, was to have the robot, start on the black line, and follow the black line all around the room, and stop when the black line ends.
With this exercise, the robot needed to constantly scan the light sensor, and determine if it is detecting a black line or not. If it is on the black line, then turn right, if it is not on black line, then turn left. So the robot will end up going zig zagging along the black line.
Since each robot had a slightly different design on how the light sensor was mounted onto the robot, the children had to use the VIEW function on the robot to do several light value sampling for their robot to find the best value to use for their program. (The light value reading was different for each robot depending on the distance of the light sensor from the floor.)
Programming wise, the kids also learned how to use the Switch block, to control the robot using a conditional statement. And for the advanced team, I further challenged them to try out their robot on our tournament mat and see if they can travel from one end to the other, just by following the black line.

Next week, after finishing with the touch sensor exercises, the kids will be ready to start examining the tournament missions, and strategizing on their tournament robot design, and mission game plan.

We will introduce the Engineering Journals, so the kids can write down their ideas, and strategies in their own engineering journals, which they will use as part of their technical presentation documentation.

Happy Halloween to all!

Coach Iffat

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