BUILDING ROBOTS WITH “CUBELETS”
STUDENTS PEN NAME: FazeWolf, Magneto
ASPIRE MENTORS: Matt Gilbert, Bill Woodworth, David Johnstone
OBSERVATIONS/BACKGROUND
We love everything to do with technology, so naturally Robotics is of interest to all of us. We were introduced to the idea of Modular Robotics and given “Cubelets” to play with. We wanted to be given a Design Challenge to work on. Matt suggested that we first get to know the robotics platform and that once we worked through some of the Programming Tutorials, he would send us a Design Challenge.
Step One: Getting to known CUBELETS.
Our first challenge was to figure out the function of each cube and to understand the way the cubelets worked together as a system. While we were testing the cubelets we made many robots and created videos.
We also learned how to use the bluetooth cubelet to pair our robots to an iPad. This allowed use the Cubelets App to control them remotely.
Below are the cubelets…our building blocks.
The information below was found at www.modrobotics.com/cubelets/
Battery and “SENSE BLOCKS”
“ACTION BLOCKS”
Speaker Cubelet | Bar Graph Cubelet |
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The Speaker Cubelet chirps (a really cool sound) according to the block's data value. | The Bar Graph Cubelet displays the block's value as a light-up bar graph. |
“THINKING BLOCKS”
if you want to see some of our ROBOTS click on the links below;
Aggressive / Afraid / Confused Robots
Step Two: Getting to know BLOCKLY to personalize our cubelets
Cubelets Blockly is a drag-and-drop coding environment for Cubelets® robot blocks. We worked through the Cubelets Blockly Tutorials to learn the basics of programming our Cubelets. The following concepts were concepts were introduced:
- Variables
- Timing
- Logic
- Conditionals
- Loops and more!
We also asked mentor, Bill Woodworth, a past “SCRATCH” Programming mentor, to give us a hand. Mr. David Johnstone, the District Technology Coordinator also collaborated with this group to try to “trouble shoot” some of the Bluetooth problems they had been experiencing.
Step Three: Our Design Challenge…
When we thought we were ready we asked Matthew to send our Design Challenge:
Construct an all-terrain (move on carpet and hard flooring) robot that can find the brightest point in a room on its own.
He added: I suggest this be approached in components (a series of smaller challenges) and it will require a non-traditional use of the blocks.
Good luck!
Matt Gilbert, MSc, PhD student
Farrell Lab, Department of Zoology
University of British Columbia
Step Four: Our Design Challenge… SUCCESS
Below is the code we developed with Matthew to make our Cubelets meet the Design Challenge
Step Five: Our Design Challenge… REFLECTION
Through this process we learned that there are many ways to solve a problem or challenge. Finding the simplest solution is the best way to do it. We also learned that even when you aren’t successful you can still learn a lot. In a way failure is the only way to success.
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Problem sovling | Finished product | Challenge complete |