Purpose: “To construct a robotic-like hand and to demonstrate how data are collected when using robotic technology.”
Overview:This exciting and engaging hands-on activity can be done in the classroom with minimal low-cost materials required. Students critically reflect as they consider uses, benefits and disadvantages to robotics both before and after construction. Links to other learning areas include Mathematics (measurement) Science (forces) and English (journal entries).
Learning Area: Technologies – Design and Technologies Strand: Knowledge and Understanding Sub-strand: Technologies and society – Role of people in design and technologies occupations. Ways products, services and environments are designed to meet community needs. Sub-strand: Materials and technologies specialisations – Suitability and safe practice when using materials, systems and components for a range of purposes.
Learning Areas: Technologies – Design and Technologies and Digital Technologies Strand: Processes and production skills. Creating solutions by: Sub-strand: Designing – Develop and communicate design ideas and decisions using annotated drawings and appropriate technical terms. Sub-strand: Evaluating – Use criteria to evaluate and justify simple design processes and solutions. Sub-strand: Collaborating and managing – Work independently, or collaboratively when required, to plan, safely create and communicate ideas and information for solutions.
A full PDF version of the activity can be found here.
You can show your students how the NASA Robonaut2 uses its robotic hand in this video clip.
References:
Learning Area Strands: http://k10outline.scsa.wa.edu.au/home/p-10-curriculum/curriculum-browser/technologies/design-and-technologies2
RoboCup Junior is a project-oriented educational initiative which is designed to introduce
primary and secondary children to the field of robotics and Artificial Intelligence (AI). With the added aspect of competitions and nation wide participants, the program is creatively designed and educational.
“The ultimate goal of RoboCup is that by the middle of the 21st century, a team of fully autonomous humanoid robot soccer players shall play (and win!) a soccer game against the (human) world champions”. ( http://www.robocupjunior.org.au).
Objectives of RoboCup:
To encourage young people to take an interest in scientific and technological fields and engage in the process through robotic competitions.
To expand students social, intellectual and problem solving skills and has a strong emphasis on learning and enjoyment.
To develop informed and independent adults, through a new appreciation of the pros and cons of technology and technological advances.
School wide and community wide engagement, cooperation and involvement through the added aspect of nation wide and world wide competition.
Useful information for teachers:
Resources: The program includes ‘Robotics teaching and learning program examples’, as well as all the relevant Curriculum documents included in the program. Assessment items are also suggested and included, such as the completion of a ‘log book’ during their stages of designing, creating, evaluating and managing (as linked directly to the Technologies curriculum).
Inclusivity: The program allows for the inclusion of students at all levels of learning, with aspects such as designing, team work, allocation of roles and data analysis.
Furthermore, the program could be a whole-school, or community wide initiative to raise awareness about technology, and create a fun and competitive learning experience.
Year:
Year 5 and 6
Year 7 and 8
Year 9 and 10 (elective subject)
Subject: Design and Technologies
Sub strand: Creating Design solutions by:
Investigating and defining
Designing
Producing and Implementing
Evaluating
Collaborating and managing
Curriculum links:
As the program is broad and allows for flexibility into all areas, the curriculum links regarding the Technologies Curriculum are extensive, and can include all strands under the Design and Technologies Subject.
The Year 5 and 6 curriculum strands are demonstrated below:
Year 5 and 6:
Knowledge and Understanding:
Investigate how electrical energy can control movement, sound or light in a designed product or system(ACTDEK020)
Critique needs or opportunities for designing, and investigate materials, components, tools, equipment and processes to achieve intended designed solutions (ACTDEP024)
Generate, develop and communicate design ideas and processes for audiences using appropriate technical terms and graphical representation techniques (ACTDEP025)
Select appropriate materials, components, tools, equipment and techniques and apply safe procedures to make designed solutions (ACTDEP026)
Develop project plans that include consideration of resources when making designed solutions individually and collaboratively (ACTDEP028)
Cross Curriculum Priorities: Sustainability, Asia and Australia’s Engagement with Asia.
Subject: Digital and Design technologies (digital systems and engineering principals)
Year level: Suitable for all Year levels
Product Description
The Cubelets Twenty standard kit comes with 20 magnetic blocks that can be snapped together to make an endless variety of robots with no programming and no wires.
Anyone can build robots that drive around on a tabletop, respond to light and other objects, and have surprisingly lifelike behavior. Instead of programming that behavior, you snap the Cubelets together and watch the behavior emerge like with a flock of birds or a swarm of bees. Each Cubelet has a tiny computer inside of it and is a robot in its own right. When you put Cubelets together, you’re actually making a robot out of several smaller robots. Each Cubelet communicates with its neighbours, so you know that if two blocks are next to each other, they’re talking.
These simple robotic cubes are the building blocks of intelligent systems
Cubelets are magnetic, electronic building blocks, each with a small computer inside, that can be connected in many different ways to move around a table, follow a hand signal, turn on a light, play sounds, or do many other creative tasks.
They were developed by Eric Schweikardt and his team at Modular Robotics, with support from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.
“Cubelets come in three categories: sense, think and act. That’s our working definition of a robot–any mechanical device that senses, thinks and acts,” says Schweikardt.
“Cubelets are an example of a complex system. They’re made of lots of little cubes–each with a different capability, such as a distance sensor cube, a drive motor cube with wheels and a battery cube. And, when you put them together, they do something greater, such as drive when they detect an object,” he continues. “They’re inspired by natural systems of individuals that join forces and work together, such as insect swarms or birds flying in a ‘V’ formation.”
These 21st century building blocks are meant to help kids learn about the basics of robotics while boosting their confidence to solve problems.
“Cubelets, by Modular Robotics, make powerful ideas of computational thinking accessible in a fun and hands-on way to students of all ages,” says NSF program manager Glenn Larsen. “The next generation of citizens needs to understand complex systems like our ecosystem and our economy. Cubelets lays the foundation for this understanding by putting the building blocks of complex systems in children’s hands.”
The Western Australian Curriculum in Technologies aims to develop the knowledge, understandings and skills to ensure that, individually and collaboratively, students:
investigate, design, plan, manage, create and evaluate solutions
are creative, innovative and enterprising when using traditional, contemporary and emerging technologies, and understand how technologies have developed over time
make informed and ethical decisions about the role, impact and use of technologies in the economy, environment and society for a sustainable future
engage confidently with and responsibly select and manipulate appropriate technologies − materials, data, systems, components, tools and equipment − when designing and creating solutions
critique, analyse and evaluate problems, needs or opportunities to identify and create solutions.
Cubelets provide a platform from which students can explore the digital hardware robotics system, its components, functions, and interactions, as well as investigating design and engineering principles and systems, focusing on forces, movement, and properties of both the individual cubes and their robotic creations.
Cross-curricular links
Cubelets link heavily into the science syllabus in the Physical Sciences strand:
Pre-primary focus is movement; Year 1 looks at light and sound; Years 2-4 explore forces such as push/pull, heat transmission, and how forces can be exerted via direct contact or from a distance; and Year 6s explore electrical sources and circuits. The Cubelets resources allows for investigation and creation using all of these science elements in the technological world.
Modular Robotics, the creators of Cubelets, have also developed an exploratory robotics lesson guide with sequential activities designed to develop students’ computational thinking skills using this resource, available for free download on the Modrobotics Education site.
The process is progressive, year group leveled, and provides a range of investigations, challenges and questions for teachers and students to explore.
Cubelets are an inventive, hands-on resource to explore robotics at a very approachable and interactive level. For more advanced digital technologies curriculum needs however, Cubelets can also be programmed! Using the Cubelets Studio OS 4. program, students can manipulate how the data flows throughout the object.
The possibilities of robotics in the classroom using Cubelets are seemingly endless – Enjoy!
Processes and Production Skills (Digital Implementation, Investigating and Defining, Producing and Implementing, Evaluating, Collaborating and Managing)
Link to the resource:
http://meetedison.com/ Contains links to lesson plans aligned with the Australian Curriculum, free software and activity downloads all created under the Creative Commons license.
Scitech (WA) run professional learning sessions for teachers on how to use Edison in the classroom
Literacy, Numeracy, Critical and Creative Thinking, ICT Capability, Ethical Understanding
Other Learning Areas:
Science, Mathematics, English (particularly Oral Language)
What can Edison do?:
Edison is programmed using EdWare, a drag and drop graphical programming language that is easy to learn. EdWare is free and open source and works on Windows, Mac and Linux computers.
Edison has simple pre-programmed features. Simply print out some barcodes (free on the website meetedison.com) and drive it across them to activate a range of pre-programmed functions, such as line following, obstacle avoidance and learning standard TV/DVD remote control commands.
Edison is Lego compatible so the only limit is your students’ imagination
Edison can navigate his way around using infrared light sensors to see obstacles to its left or right.
Students can program Edison to learn commands from just about any remote control and can drive forward, backward, turn left, turn right, spin left and spin right.
Edison can be programmed to follow a line or stay within a border using its line tracking sensor.
It can also sense light, communicate with other Edison robots, play sounds and respond to sounds e.g. clapping
Classroom Activities:
There is a series of 10 (Australian Curriculum linked) lessons available on the website. Obviously these assume children have access to an Edison robot. A class set would be ideal however a teacher could use just one as an extension or station activity.
Activities include:
Technology skills – Students familiarise themselves with the programming environment and how to download a program to the robot.
Introduction to sequential programming – Students learn how the robot responds to command icons and bring together the concepts of time, speed and distance.
Sequential programming and basic geometry – Students learn how the robot responds to time and geometry and how they can achieve driving control of the robot.
Reinforce learning – Students use knowledge from lessons 1 through 3 to achieve two fun open ended activities (Driving challenge and Mexican Wave)
Creative thinking and problem solving – Students come up with their own challenge and conceptualise how the robot can provide a solution. Students may select their own topic, state the program’s purpose and explain where it could be used in the real world.
Introduction to inputs (sensors) – Students learn how to make the robot respond to outside stimulus (claps).
Introduction to the concept of obstacle detection and artificial intelligence – Students program the robot to make decisions (artificial intelligence) in response to obstacles in the robot’s environment.
Industrial like robotic behaviour – Students learn about basic robot sensing and control similar to that used in advanced automated factories and warehouses.
Environmental measurement and programming mathematics – Students learn about measuring light levels, storing them in memory and performing mathematics to control the robots behaviour.
Arduino (or Genuino if located outside of the USA) is an open-source prototyping computer platform based on easy-to-use hardware and software. It consists of a company, project and user community that designs and creates kits in the form of Arduino boards, for building digital devices that can sense and control items in the physical world. Arduino boards can read inputs, such as a light on a sensor or a Twitter message, and transform it into an output, such as turning on an LED or publishing something online.
Students can control what their board does by sending instructions to the board’s microcontroller in Arduino programming language on the Arduino’s software. Arduino has been the catalyst for thousands of projects, shared on the Arduino’s worldwide interactive community as additional learning tools.
The company was started in 2005 at the Interaction Design Institute in Ivrea, Italy, as a simple tool for students without a background in electronics and programming. Over time the tool has gradually become more open-source (be built independently/adapted for differing needs) and less expensive (pre-assembled modules cost less than $50). It runs on computers and is easy-to-use for beginners but flexible for more advanced users.
Arduino step-by-step tutorials and procedures can be used by teachers and students to “build low cost scientific instruments, to prove chemistry and physics principles, or to get started with programming and robotics”.
Subject: Technologies
Year Level: 5+
Strand: Digital Technologies
Knowledge and Understanding
Processes and Production
Sub Strands:
Digital Systems
Representation of Data
Digital Implementation
Creating Solutions by: Investigating and Defining, Designing, Producing and Implementing, Evaluating, Collaborating and Managing
Cross Curriculum Priorities and General Capabilities:
Literacy (specific coding and programming language); Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Capability (understanding digital systems, procedures and computational thinking); Critical and Creative Thinking (problem solving, innovating and designing); Personal and Social Capability (project management, collaboration); Ethical Understanding (understanding safe procedures, complex issues associated with technology and consider possibilities); Sustainability (recycling, use of resources).
Links to Other Learning Areas:
Science, Technologies (Design), English, Maths, The Arts.
Arduino can simply be applied to any primary school learning area as the Ardunino boards act as a creative tool that allows students to use technology to manipulate the real world in a range of contexts – from robotics, to models, to experiments.
How to use this Resource:
Read an introduction to Arduino
Read the necessary guides related to the program: e.g. What is the Arduino Software and how to change the default language; Using and installing Arduino Libraries; How to install and manage Cores; etc…
Install the Arduino Software onto your computer (Windeows, Mac OS X, Linux.
Arduino