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WEEK of April 10, 2006 |
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CAUTION:
Robot Crossing by Jeffrey Stanley “My project was to make a robot that would go up the ramp, realize it was at the edge, stop, turn around and go back down.” Eleventh grader Molly Schwartz stood in front of her computer in the fourth floor science lab, a yellow, four-wheeled Lego Mindstorms robot in hand. Nearby on the floor she had made an incline from a three-foot long piece of cardboard and a few stacked textbooks. “The goal is to make sure your robot doesn’t commit suicide,” interjected robotics teacher Greg George (sitting in photo above) as he passed by, stepping over the ramp. Molly finished tweaking the program she had written and uploaded it—beamed it—right onto the robot’s hard drive. She knelt by the ramp, sat the robot down and turned it on. It climbed the ramp, reached the edge and stopped, turning to head back down but having trouble making it there. It stopped midway and kept hesitating. A seam in the cardboard ramp was causing it some confusion.
Across the lab eleventh grader Gwen Fyfe sat at her laptop watching little colored blips representing mice fumble their way around an onscreen maze looking for one of three yellow squares hidden there. “That’s cheese,” she explained about the yellow squares. “I’m trying to make it so that if they don’t reach a yellow patch within a set amount of time, they starve.” Unlike Molly’s project, which used real robots and Lego’s own programming software to try and customize the robot’s behavior, Gwen was using StarLogo, a software package developed at MIT, to try her hand at writing programs which could only be run using simulated robots on a computer. Students in the year-long robotics and programming course are at a more advanced level now than they were way back in September. During the fall semester basic concepts were introduced. Students built robots from kits and learned about circuitry, including how to solder and how to troubleshoot when circuits fail to work. Some of this basic electrical training even included building a decidedly unrobotic AM radio, but Greg explained that building a radio is a good way to learn how to work with electronic components. During the spring semester the students moved forward, learning the two software packages that allow them to experiment with writing their own programs. Like Gwen, twelfth grader Leah Thompson is a fan of StarLogo’s simulated environments. She prefers that over working with the actual Lego robots. “I like doing this better because there’s less equipment to worry about. You’re not limited by physicality. It lets you try more.” Meanwhile on the floor Molly had moved along from the ramp to a two-dimensional maze drawn on a piece of cardboard in thick black marker. Her robot was now trying to use its vertical light sensor to sense the dark borders and find its way through the maze. The robot hesitated and then began going in circles. “It’s recognizing the black, it’s just not turning,” she complained, picking up the robot. It was back to the drawing board for this one. Eleventh grader Alex Lowchy also prefers to work in the physical world. He knelt next to Molly, building a three-dimensional maze using biology textbooks for walls. His robot had a horizontal touch sensor on the front instead of a light sensor like Molly’s. He beamed his program onto the robot’s hard drive and positioned it at the entrance to his textbook labyrinth. “It is the best class,” Alex said of the year-long course. “You learn a lot about things and it’s fun. It’s science but you’re getting to be creative with it. And...” he whispered, “Greg gives us candy.” Across the room Leah overheard and nodded her head. “It’s really cool. Greg George is the nicest teacher in the world.” “That’s strictly on Wednesdays during the double period!” interjected their teacher from the back of the room where he observed Gwen’s progress. “Please don’t let that get out!”
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