My first class on Robotics was last Monday. This class is currently for 4th and 5th grade students and is using EZ-Robot products. The class is strictly voluntary and is taught after school. 50% of the students that are in the 4th and 5th grade have chosen to stay at school an extra hour to learn about robotics through this program. We have called the program SM@RT which stands for Science and Math through Robotic Technology. There are other programs currently running that other students had previously committed to participating in that are held at the same time. Some of these programs are over in December and I expect that participation percentage to be closer to 60% by that time. Here is what some of the parents had to say about the program after only the first day...
Stacie Smith Cobbs Sounds fun! Grace really wanted to take the class and she was so disappointed to find out it was during allegro. Which also is on Mondays.
School board member
Stacy O'Toole Webb They are SO excited! Thank you from all
Stacy O'Toole Webb And, now we are doing chores to earn a robot. Whatever it takes.
Parent
Melissa French Luke F. loved it! Thank you for giving of your time and knowledge!
Headmaster who saw some of the first lesson
Steve Lessman Incredible! Thank you for using your knowledge & insight to help students at SWCS.
Parent
Rick Megan Still Ethan loved it, he wouldn't stop talking about it all the way home! Thank you!
Parent
Christi Jones-Martin Great! Grayson will be joining you in January when Allegro ends!
Parent
Mykl Spaeny You blew my boys away! They talked my leg off tonight. Jake has put a robot on his Christmas list. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Thank you EZ-Robot for making it easy to teach a subject that is so complex. I cant wait until they make the robot move for the first time.
We covered a lot in the firs class including
Analog data
Digital data
Default wire colors and what they represent
Sonar sensors - how they work and what they are used for
IR distance sensors - How they work and what they are used for
Light sensors - How they work and what they are used for
Cameras - When they work great and when you would want to use other sensors instead
Microphones - when you would use them and why
Servo motors - how they work and when you would want to use them
Stepper motors - How they work and when you would want to use them
Analog ports on the EZ-B V4
Digital ports on the EZ-B V4
Camera port on the EZ-B V4
They soaked the information in like a sponge. I quizzed them at the end of the class some and they did great. Tomorrow I am going to go meet these students for lunch. I look forward to it.
The next lesson is going to be on Electricity. That is a huge subject but we will cover
Electrons, Protons, and neutrons
Volts
Amps
How batteries work
How electricity flows through their robots.
How to limit this electricity for devices that require less voltage
I have some fun ways of teaching about electricity that help the kids remember principles of electricity that many people dont understand.
Feel free to follow the students progress at HTTP://cochranrobotics.com/SMART
Asked
— Edited
You are doing a great job and thanks for sharing what you are doing.
j
The students asked a lot of questions, some of them kind of silly, but their imaginations are starting to work on what they want their robot to do. I mentioned that you could make a robot to do your homework, but that would mean that you would have to know how to do your homework, and then be able to program your robot to do your homework which would be more difficult than just doing your homework, and much less fun than programming your robot to do other cool things instead of homework.
Next week we should be able to start building JD, Six, a 3D printed Six, Wall-E and Gizmo (a class built robot from the previous post). Everyone is excited for this and looks forward to being able to start making robots do something. If this had been a daily class, we would be into the second week of it and already building robots. How cool would that be?
j
Guess who can't wait for class on Monday!
j
We covered the different WIFI modes and what each is used for. We also connected each tablet to each robot and added the EZB-V4 Info module which shows the temp of the processor in the robot and the current battery level. We also added the camera module and showed what the camera on each robot was seeing. I asked the teams to tell Tate (my helper) what they knew about the robots they have to work with. It is interesting to see their first impressions. Its hard to hear what they are saying, but this will be compared to a video that will be recorded after they have spent about 4 hours with this robot.
The plan is to rotate the robots between the groups. We have 2 robots that were bought and designed by someone else, 1 that uses someone else's design but is 3D printed, 1 that is a modification of an exiting design and one that was designed by the class. Two of these are 6 legged robots, 1 is a biped, 1 is wheeled, and one is tracked. This is a pretty good spread of robots and will help the students to be exposed to many different types of robots.
J
They are fortunate to have a great teacher.
Steve S
Thanks for sharing .. loved to see the smiles.
The students are very excited now and are really looking forward to Friday. Also, I had a lot of fun today. Good times!
We were able to spend about 4 hours one friday a couple of weeks ago with the robots. There were 7 students who showed up for this. The students used the demo projects for these robots and had the robots running all over the floor chasing each other, and avoiding chairs and tables. The ones who were able to attend had a great time.
Last monday we discussed what each robot could be used for. We didn't spend a lot of time with the robots, but spent a lot of time thinking about how each robot could be used by the school for things like delivering messages to teachers, telling stories to other students, entertaining other students with dances and other animatronic type activities and as a telemetry robot.
Yesterday I had the students start a new project to have them focus on movement. Simple things like moving forward, moving backward, turning left and turning right were attempted by the students. The students quickly discovered that tracked or wheeled robots were much simpler to make move. One group with a six got their robot to take one step. The JD robot could take about 1/2 of a step and the wall-e and prototype were moving in a matter of minutes. We didn't use the example projects for this so that the students could understand the logical steps to making a robot do something. It was an exciting time for the students that got theirs to move correctly. Next week we will use the example projects for the walking robots and build from there.
Until next week, have a great one all!
Last week we were hit with a snow storm that cancelled school. It wasn't bad, but ice makes roads bad when you have kids that are traveling up to 50 miles one way to attend school. Being a private school that has had many national merit scholars over the past few years (about 15% of the graduating seniors) brings people from great distances to the school.
This upcoming week the school is out for Thanksgiving. As such, there is no class this coming week. This has given me time to get all of the robots in correct working condition again, which will help the class to progress more smoothly, and the phrase "Mr. Cochran, this didn't work" to be heard far less frequently. I did have a talk with the class a couple of weeks ago about them depleting my personal stock of servo motors and other electronics, and about how these were robots and not dolls, and should be controlled from the computer and not by hand. They understand that by doing so, they are destroying servo motors that cost money to replace. In any event, they are learning the best lesson available by doing this in that some of the groups had to look on with other groups instead of work with their robots due to "mistakes" that they had made. For me, it gives me a great deal of experience in fixing issues with the robots that were caused by these students. All is good and we should be back on track next week.
Another piece of exciting news for us has arrived. Our Roli robot has moved to a phase of "Step 3 of 4) Preparing Order". We will be replacing my Wall-E with this robot. It will allow me to start working on this build again, or allow me to gut this robot and use the components in my InMoov build. I haven't decided which to do yet, but I am leaning toward the InMoov build. I will be buying an Ultimaker 2 in February and restarting all of my prints then, so I have plenty of time to decide. I plan on placing my 3 EZ-B V4's in the InMoov and making him mobile via a home built Segway. This is an ambitious project but one that I see showing the abilities of the V4 very well. The first step of this project is to get the Wall-E back to use some of the components to reduce the cost of the build, which will allow me to get a 3D printer that is touted as very good. I sure wish the smart extruder on the makerbot 5th gen was all that it was supposed to be. If it were, I would go in that direction, but at this point it seems to be far more frustrating than promising.
Have a great week. I hope it finds everyone in good health and with time to work on their robots.
Here is the first robot that was "completed" with its maden run.
I am proud of these kids. They have learned a lot. This summer they are going to help me build my InMoov.