Robotics Report Day Two: Intro to Robotics, Closed Shape and One-metre Dash Challenge

By: Ivana Ofori, Maame Adwoa Wilson and Christine Buckle

Innovators line up their robots for their second challenge.

Intro to Robotics

Most people think that they know what a robot is—and in their minds, they understand it—that is, until they try to define it. That raises all sorts of questions, like, “What makes a robot different from an ordinary computer?” or “Does a machine need to have independent intelligence before it is considered a robot?”

Students watch a video discussing opportunities where robotics can be applied

In our class, we argued about this for a while and on our own, we could not come to a conclusion, which was fine, because in the words of Sebastian Thrun, “The meaning of the term ‘robot’ today differs substantially from the term just a decade ago.” (Never mind that a decade is over half our lives so far.)

A fascinating video about engineering by University of Newcastle showed us something we all know but never pay attention to: that everything we do is done with the help of engineering—from your alarm ringing when you wake up, down to the hot water you use to bathe in the night before bed.

Once again, we know the power of dreaming, since robots started out as imagined things. The first time it was mentioned was in a play in 1921. Subsequently, it was in movies, cartoons and stories. But now? They’re being translated into reality, and this is what we are experimenting with.

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Closed Shape Challenge

Students prepare for their first challenge

We had our first challenge which was to program our robots to move in a way such that it would form a closed shape. The criteria being that it would stop at exactly the point it started. The various groups came out with shapes; the usual triangles, squares and other quadrilaterals. Other robots just couldn’t finish forming the shape; apparently the space was “too small.” Another group did something very innovative. They formed an eight (8) and their robot did an almost perfect forward and reverse. Very innovative, and what we would call lateral thinking.

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One-metre Dash

It’s the robotics one-metre dash challenge!

We learnt how to program our robots to move for a distance of exactly one metre. Sounds simple right? But here’s the catch, we were not allowed to test it and it was supposed to work perfectly on the FIRST TRY! My first thought was, how in the world can a ‘first-time’ programmer like myself and many others get this done?!

So we started work. We had to do various calculations to find out the number of revolutions it needed to make to stop at exactly one metre. The calculations were a bit hectic, but we pulled through. Our only challenge was finding the correct speeds on both motors to make it straighter.

When it was time for the “race”, all the robots were lined up and to my surprise many of the robots started and stopped at one metre. Others didn’t.

In the end, we learnt that the efficiency of the robot isn’t only in the testing but also in the analysis.