Robotics+Class+7

During this lesson, our robotics class was divided into two groups. Since both Mr. Emmanuelle and the teacher that gave us a lecture last time were present, ninth and tenth grades were building robots with Mr. Emmanuelle, whilst the eleventh grade was listening to another lecture. We were building the robot we were planning during one of the lessons when Mr. Emmanuelle was absent. Originally, we were in a group of four – Nadia, Ottavia, Madi and me. Our robot was supposed to be an automatic nutcracker. This lesson, a few new people joined our group – Chiara, Mattia and Sara. The original plan looked something like the picture on the right. The nut would enter at the top and fall down, where it would be stopped by a sticking out piece. Whilst it passed under the bumper, the sensor would be moved. The robot would be programmed so that when the sensor sensed movement, the wheel would start going down, dragging the upper platform with it. Under a certain angle, the nut would be crushed. However, that plan met a lot of obstacles. There were many reasons for it not being perfect – for example, we didn’t manage to stabilize the sensor in the upper platform. We had no way of making the wheel go down, since the motor to which it was attached had to stay in one place. Also, the nut would be constantly falling down from the open sides. In the end, we managed to solve the problems. The final product looked like the picture below. We replaced the bumper with the ultrasonic sensor: when the sensor stopped seeing light which would be blocked by the nut, motor would make several rotations (both the motor and the sensor would be attached to the main body, which would hold the programming). The motor would drag the upper platform that was attached to it. The building took a lot of time, since we found it very hard to attach the sensor to the panels. We didn’t quite finish with the robot – the programming was somehow wrong, and we didn’t have enough time to re-program it. Except that, the robot was finished (though not put to testing).