ICEX 2011 - Malta: Zoe Wood

Showing posts with label Zoe Wood. Show all posts

Friday, March 18, 2011

Inspiring the Next Generation - Teaching Robotics

Part of the ICEX goals this year have been reaching out to elementary school aged children and introducing them to robotics and inspiring them to go into science and technology fields. During the quarter back at Cal Poly, we visited two different 2^nd grade classrooms at Pacheco elementary school every Wednesday. We switched off between the classrooms and had hands-on lessons that talked about design, testing and programming. It was very successful. The kids seemed to really enjoy it and retain a lot of what we taught. We even got a book of thank you notes written by all the students afterward – a nice touch.

Originally, that was going to be the extent of our outreach. At the suggestion of Timmy though, we packed a suitcase full of little robots so we could continue the lessons at several Maltese grade schools. We started off with a brief lecture about different types of robots and introduced the robots we brought and the paper disks used to program them.

The disks we used were small circular pieces of paper (that we had to individually cut out beforehand). The robots have two sensors that read the disk as it rotates and determines if the 2 rows of squares are black or white. Depending on the combination of black and white, the robot will go forward, stop, or turn left or right.

We then broke the students into groups of 3-4 and let them each “program” the robot to navigate a simple maze we created on the floor with tape by coloring disks with black pencils and pens. Overall, the students were very excited about it and there were several students who even inquired about where they could get their own robot so they could do more on their own.

It was encouraging to be so enthusiastically received by both the students and faculty of the schools and in addition to being a good educational experience for the students there, it was a great experience for the ICEX team as well to be able to talk with so many students (who represented a variety of ethnic backgrounds).

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Failure (Almost) to Launch

Today we launched the AUV in Pembroke. It took a couple trips in Timmy's smaller car to get the AUV, and all 10 of us out to the coast. We were all excited to get in the water (Chris was the most enthusiastic), and had planned ahead by wearing our swimsuits. We were especially excited about the AUV's first launch in the Mediterranean. Our plan was to take the AUV out to about 10 meters from the water line, just past the big rocks. We would then let it go out on its first mission to a waypoint approximately 100 meters off of shore. It was then supposed to turn around, and come back to a final stopping point of 60 meters off shore. This was mostly what happened.

Our first problems started when we had trouble transferring files for the mission from the toughbook to the AUV's hard drive. We were finally able to get them transferred after many debugging attempts, resets, and reboots. It was at this point that we were ABANDONED by Chris, as he had to go off to give a talk at the University of Malta (which he reportedly rocked). Next, we had trouble with the IVER (AUV) connecting to its instruments. This was solved by another reboot of the IVER. We finally had success! Time to launch that robot.

Tyler and Jeff got into the water and Andy, Billy, and Brig brought the IVER to the water's edge. I had a nice view from up on a large rock where we had placed the Wifi box. Tyler and Jeff swam the IVER out and the rest went according to our initial plan. BUT THEN! IT STOPPED! So, it turns out, we over estimated the distance from the coast, and when the IVER came to rest it was too far to establish a Wifi connection so we could not manually drive the IVER back. As the IVER started drifting away in the current, we realized we needed to send a rescue mission. Since Tyler and Jeff were already in the water, they were sent to go after it. It was very exciting watching them bring the IVER back, especially when the waves started getting bigger. In the end, we successfully launched and completed a mission - even though it wasn't quite what we had expected. Hooray for success!