With our first week under our belts, our class began moving into our objective oriented tasks. Using what we learned about the various movement functions of our bot, the class started off this week with a mission that involved rotating around two tall objects. The playing field was narrow, and the objects were easily tipped over, making this objective particularly challenging. The students had to carefully navigate around the objects, while staying within the playing field, all while making precise turns and movements so that they wouldn’t disturb the objects. After three days of testing and making adjustments, each of our student groups were able to complete the task and we moved onto our next objective—trash collection. For this task, the playing field widened and was scattered with various lego pieces of differing sizes, shapes and weight. The objective is to move each of the objects out of the playing field, and as an added bonus, the students can also deposit the items into a designated drop off zone. While it may seem easy to simply push these objects out of the playing field, the true challenge lies in the necessity to build an attachment that allows for easy and accurate movement of these pieces. This is where the students individual creativity can really flourish, as they are only limited by their imagination and the lego pieces that have been provided to them. What’s truly remarkable about this task is seeing just how many changes their designs go through in such a short amount of time. What seems cool at first to the students, quickly becomes a nuisance when they realize their bot is too heavy, too lopsided, or too flimsy. However, a true engineer never gives up, and will see each failure as another data point for success.
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