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Robot Day Course Description

What is Robot Day?

Robot day is where an organization takes over a large room for a single-day event to get kids interested in STEM, coding and Robotics.

The target audience of Robot Day is students in the 4th to 9th grades that are curious about how robots work.

The room is configured to allow participants to enter through a door and then be greeted by a host greeter. The greeter offers them a challenge such as "Would you like to take our robot challenge? If you succeed you will get this robot expert sticker".

The participants are then given a checklist of around six "tables" that they must visit to finish the challenge. Each table has a set of items on display and a poster board that describes the items. Behind each table is a facilitator that asks the participants to pick up an item and explore it. Many of the items have on/off power button and a display that changes based on how the participant uses the device.

The event is configured to show all the components of a collision avoidance robot. The robot is constructed from around $19 of parts built around a low-cost microcontroller board such as the Cytron Maker Pi RP2040 board.

Here is a breakdown of the tables and the final robot coral:

Table 1: Welcome table

  • Participants are given a checklist
  • Participants put their name on the top of the checklist

Table 2: Robot Batteries

  • Different types of batteries
  • Battery polarity: positive and negative
  • What are dead batteries?
  • Testing batteries
  • Rechargeable batteries
  • Why do power cords get in the way of robots?
  • Why do robots need batteries?

Table 3: Robot Motors

  • Create a motor circuit with a battery and a DC hobby motor
  • Note that both the battery and the motor have black and red wires (polarity)
  • Completing the battery circuit with a conducting wire
  • Can you get the motor to reverse direction by mixing the colors of the wires?

Table 4: Controlling Motors

  • Reversing a motor direction with a single switch
  • The H-bridge circuit simulator
  • Adjusting motor speed with more power
  • Using a power knob
  • Pulse with modulation

Table 5: Sensors

  • Buttons on a breadboard with LEDs
  • Knobs (rotary encoder knobs)
  • Time-of-flight sensors
  • Ultrasonic sensors
  • Compass direction sensor
  • Tilt and turn sensors (accelerometers)

Table 6: Displays

  • LEDs and RGB LEDs
  • LED strips with adjustment knobs
  • Character and graphic displays
  • The OLED display
  • Smartwatch displays
  • Display tradeoffs - cost and quality

Table 7: Microcontrollers

  • What is a microcontroller?
  • How does a program control the rules of a system?
  • What is a collision-avoidance robot?
  • How does a robot avoid crashing into a wall?
  • Rules for turning when you get too close to the wall
  • Example: When it is getting close to a wall, the robot should...
  • Adjusting the settings in your robot

Robot Corral

The robot corral is an area on the ground with a six-inch high border fence around a 10x10 foot area that the collision avoidance robots can roam around in.

  • Student are encouraged to pick up a robot and place it in the robot corral.
  • Students are shown where the power switch is and how to activate the rules.
  • Students can step into the corral to make the robots move around and note that they try to avoid hitting the wall of the corral and they can use their hands to block the robot's path and get it to change direction.