Review of Robotics

This is my last blog for my Robotics class. I have had a great experience in Robotics class. I liked this class very much. On the first day, we started to build the robot. I guess, without the instruction manual for how to build the robot, no one would have been able to make it!! But, as the class went on, we got more used to the parts of the robot.I had never known that LEGOcould be so coplex.There were some students in the class who made extremely cool and fascinating robots. The "Goliath" made by Bart and Kenny was truly a classic.

Another fascinating thing I liked about this class was using the LEGO MINDSTORM software to program the NXT. This was something new to me and it was very interesting because we were making software on the computer and then transferring it to the NXT. we could basically make any software we wanted and the robot would do what we liked- provided that we programmed the software properly. As we got more and more knowledge about robotics, we learned how to make more complex software using the sensors etc.

Another thing I like about the NXT ROBOT was the different types of sound sensors it uses. There were four sensors. They were the touch, light and utrasonic and the sound sensor. The touch sensor is a sensor which besically continues to program when it is pressed, released or both before continuing.The light sensor reads the light value of the light which it senses.The sound sensor basically records the level of the sound which has been emmitted from a ceratin place and the Utrasonic sensor basicvally measures the distance between the robot and an object.the way it does that is that it sends out ultrasonic rays and the rays bounce back if they hit an object. We were able to use all of them. we had done an investigation for each of the sensors. After we had done an investigaiton for all of the sensors, we then had a challenge set by Mr Inskeep. In that challenge, we had to use all of the sensors of the robot to complete a course. We had to use all of our knowledge to do that. It was a challenging course.

Overall, this class has been a very good experience for me and I enjoyed every moment of this Robotics experience.

Tractor Pull

This is our last and final challenge in our robotics class. IN this challenge, we will have to make our robot a big piecee of lego. IN this challenge, we will be testing the strength of the robot. We need to design the robot to pull that weight with ease.

The team that pulls that amount of weight the fastest will win the challenge. They would prpbably get an A+.

Get in Gear Investigation

We had worked on the get i gear investigation a while back. It involved changing gears of our NXT robot and seeing which changes caused the robot to go faster and which ones caused the robot to go slower.
There are two gears: the drivin gear and the driven gear. The driving gear is directly connected to the motor with a stick that goes through the centers of both of them, and the driven gear is a gear that is attached to the wheel and connected to the driving gear.

Gears and Speed (Investigation Summary)

In this investigation, the aim is to find out which hypothesis is correct and how er can apply the hypothesis to the real speed of the robt.
There are two hypotheses:
Hypothesis A : speed1/ gear ratio 1= speed2/gear ratio2
Hypothesis B : speed1 X gear ration1 = speed 2 X gear ratio 2

In our investigation we found out that hypothesis B was correct because the assumed value was pretty close to the actual value. It also means that for a robot to move faster, the gear ratio has to decrease. As the gear rato is less, the speed is faster.

Drag Race

In the drag race challlenge, we have to design our robot to go the fastet that it can go down a straight path/ line and achieve the fastest time and beat the robots to win.
The length of the course is three meters,

There will be heats in which all the robots will compete and race each other. The final will be between two robots who will compete each other and battle it out for eternal glory. The winning team will get an A+.

I hope that our team (Avery, me and Clare) are the team that get the A+. I wish all the teams the best of luck and look forward to racing with them on the couirse. May the best team win.