| Easton Ultra-Lego Exploratory Robotics Club (EULER Club) |
|
|
| Easton Ultra-Lego Exploratory Robotics Club (EULER Club) |
|
|
The Design and Scientific Process
The most important concept we try to teach and get across to the students is the Design Process and the Scientific Process, both very similar to each other. The Lego Technic and Mindstorm Robotics kit provide a great opportunity to practice designing and programming using the process in the table shown below.
| 1. | Identify the problem (specs & constraints) |
Identify the problem |
| 2. | Explore alternatives | Hypothesize |
| 3. | Design, build, program, test | Test it |
| 4. | Redesign and optimize | Evaluate data |
| 5. | Communicate/disseminate solution | Determine conclusions |
The Lego bricks and robotics kit provide an ideal way to explore how things work. The ease in which the bricks can be assembled and reassembled allow the students to have no fear when needing to redesign a robot to make it better or stronger than earlier prototypes. This ease of assembly allows the students to look at failure as an opportunity to make something better and that in the design process, it is rarely the first design that works the best.
The icon-based programming software like RoboLab and RIS provides the students with an ideal tool to easily manipulate, experiment, and explore many programming concepts, much like the Lego bricks are for building. The icon-based syntax simplifies what needs to be learned for syntax, but provides lots of power for controlling how a robot reacts and collects information. As the get older, they can easily transition into object-based programming languages like C++ or NQC to get finer controls for the robots. The icon-based approach provides an ideal way to learn the five main components of the design and scientific process. It also teaches that rarely will the first try produce the best result and its ok to fail. It is through the failures that some of the best learning will occur.
