Robots!

This semester I had a great opportunity to work with Robots. ASME is an engineering club here at BYU and they sponsored an event with local elementary schools. For the last 8 weeks, I have gone to a local elementary school and mentored 6th graders. Our task was to build a robot that could pick up a colored ball, navigate through 3 walls(which changed order), and drop the ball in a small basket. We were using Lego's NXT Mindstorm (see http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx). The Robot was actually pretty cool. We built it in about 3 weeks and spent the other weeks trying to perfect the programming. Besides trying to keep 6th graders on task, the hardest part was calibrating the robot using an old Mac. The computers at the elementary school were pretty outdated, which made programming slow and frustrating. However, on the big day, we were quite successful.

There were 10 schools, and each school had 10 minutes to do as many runs through the course as they wanted. Points were awarded for every task accomplished. We got points for picking up the ball, staying in bounds, getting through walls, and reaching the drop destination.

Here is our first run: 

Another issue we had is that we built and practiced our robot on smooth tile, so the plywood was difficult for our robot. We had a few different programs, and were able to pick up the ball, navigate through the maze, and get to the final basket. Unfortunately, we neglected to take into consideration the height of the basket, and our claws weren't high enough to get over the lip of the basket. So our robot would just run into the side of it.

At the end of the day, the kids from Edgemont Elementary were tied for first! In order to decide who got the first prize picking of candy, a tough game of rock,paper, scissors ensued. We came out victorious! "WE'RE NUMBER ONE! WE'RE NUMBER ONE!"

It was a great experience!

I also Youtube NXT robots to see what people have applications people have thought of. Robots are now solving rubics cubes, playing connect 4, and even painting the Mona Lisa.

What ideas do you have for a robot?