Robotics Club today

Every Friday at 2:30 PM, I join the Encino Park Elementary School's Robotics Club for a meeting. The club is made up of about 25 kids, mostly fifth-graders. Each year the school draws names from a larger list of kids who are interested in the club. During the club meeting, the kids do small projects assigned by the teachers. Sometimes they will prepare for a competition with other clubs within the North East Independent School District. Alice Pearce and Vicki Craig are the teachers who sponsor this club.

My job is to help the teachers run the club meetings, and to tell the kids about my own experiences with robots.

During the six weeks of the ALIR class, I bring the borrowed Lego NXT robot kit back to the school for the duration of the meeting.

First class meeting is a success!

Today the Robotics for Grandparents class met for the first time. As expected, there were a lot of people, and the resources (PCs and robots) were stretched pretty thin.

Before class, I had a near panic when the "Baby laptop", an Aspire One with a 10.1 inch display, would not install the NXT software. The reason given was that the resolution of the display was insufficient. So my fallback was to use the Art Room computer for the third robot. When I installed the software on my new HP laptop, I got some odd results. Windows Vista (insert your favorite cusswords here) reported that the NXT software was not certified for Vista. I continued installation. When it came time to test the USB connection, all the USB ports were inactive. It turned out that was because Vista was attempting to update to Service Pack 2, which apparently disables some of the external interfaces. Anyhow, I stopped the SP2 update and rebooted the computer, at which time the USB ports came back. Panic over. When I arrived at ALIR, I realized that I didn't have the CD with class material on it. Not to worry, the older laptop had everything on it, so I copied the class material to a USB drive and took it to the Art Room computer. Waverly Jones of the Education Center staff had installed the NXT on the Art Room computer, as promised (thanks!).

As I said, there were lots of people who came to the class. I started by going through the Intro to Robotics presentation from Carnegie Mellon, which gave the class a good introduction to what we are going to do. Next, I gave a little demonstration of the NXT program editor and downloader.

Then it was time for the class assignment. The class problem required the robot to move straight ahead exactly 13.5 inches. The class members organized themselves into three groups (I expect those groups to be somewhat fluid). They worked together well, and came to (nearly) the same conclusion in about the same amount of time. Once a team had demonstrated their solution to the problem, I gave them an add-on: make the robot turn 180 degrees after stopping. The solutions for the turn varied somewhat, depending on how they did the turn.

By the time the teams had achieved the turn, it was time to wrap up the class.

I think the first class went very well. There was a lot of enthusiasm in the three teams, and the cooperation among team members was great.

Technical problem

The robot loaned by Encino Park Elementary's robotics club did something strange when I ran the little demo program to test it. It veered away from a straight line. It will take some more testing to determine whether the problem is in one of the servos or in a wheel or in the caster at the back. I will check the caster at the back first, by aligning it in a trailing position first, then in a leading position, then in a cross-path position. Each of those should produce a characteristic behavior. If that isn't the problem, I will check the tires. If one of them is mis-mounted on its wheel, I think that could cause the off-track behavior. If that isn't the problem, I will check the motors.

After checking again, I found no problems. Maybe a glitch, I don't know. Not to worry.

SA BEST kickoff

Today, San Antonio BEST Robotics held its 2009 kickoff. BEST is a robotics program for teenagers, mostly high schoolers. SA BEST provides parts to build a robot that plays a game. The game for 2009 was kept secret until today, when 30 school teams attended. Now they have six weeks to build their robots. The prizes range from small trophies to BIG scholarships. There's more to winning than building the best-performing robot. Teams must demonstrate good engineering practice, sportsmanship, and knowledge of their robot. They must also prepare an engineering notebook that documents their process, ideas, and test results. Grandparents are encouraged to attend these tournaments to see what today's young people can achieve. Warning: It's very noisy on game day.

For information about San Antonio BEST, see http://www.sabest.org

ALIR Fall 2009 instructor meeting

Today ALIR held its Fall instructor meeting, in which the instructors for the semester are recognized, and new ones are introduced. We were given class rosters and some additional rules and regulations (e.g., no food or drink in the classrooms). Briefings on computer usage were given to instructors who needed them.



A member of the NEISD staff kindly offered to install my NXT software on the classroom computer I'll be using. That avoids any problems that the NEISD IT folks might have with me installing a *driver* (God forbid) on one of their computers.



I ordered 18 copies of my seven page handout (21 slides, I think). They should be ready in my mailbox on Wednesday morning.



I'm sending a note to the 18 registered and 6 waitlisted students, welcoming them to the class and inviting them to participate in this blog.

The Robots are Ready!

I have finished building and testing the three base robots for this class. They are built from the design in the Quick Start guide for the Lego 8527 Mindstorms NXT kit. Students will write, download, and run programs for these robots.

The school-club robot gave me some trouble last night. Its memory was missing the "Demo" program that I needed for testing. I did a hard reset (paper clip 4 seconds in the hole below the USB port). The result was, as expected, that the screen was blank and I could hear ticking from the speaker. When I tried to download new firmware, the NXT was not found. I checked the driver, which seemed to be OK. I re-installed the NXT package on my laptop, to no avail. Someone on the RobotC forum suggested I hold the pin in for 20 seconds. That didn't help. Finally, I removed one of the AA cells from the NXT and replaced it after 10 seconds. That was the ticket. The firmware downloaded, and everything was cool, except when I ran Demo, the motors were a little sluggish. Fresh batteries cured that problem. Since the batteries were fresh from last night, and were pretty warm, I conclude that when the NXT brick is in "tick tick" mode, it draws power and doesn't have enough intelligence to shut itself down. So, when in "tick tick" mode and frustrated, pull the batteries before quitting for the night.

This morning I have an ALIR instructor meeting, and I will take some handout pages for copying.

I'm told through the grapevine that there are even more people wanting to take this course. I'm not sure what to do about that, except to promise them that we'll be back next Fall.

What is Robotics for Grandparents?

"Robotics for Grandparents" is the name of a six-week course I'm teaching at the Academy of Learning In Retirement (ALIR). ALIR is a Continuing Education program of the North East Independent School District in San Antonio, Texas.

The purpose of the course is to let grandparents understand and enjoy what their grandkids are doing with Lego Mindstorms robots.

Class meetings are on Wednesday at 1:00 PM, and each class lasts 75 minutes. The first class is September 16, 2009.

The course participants will learn some elementary robotic skills, using the Lego Mindstorms NXT 1.1 kit. Our lesson plans will be taken from the Carnegie Mellon University web site.

Current enrollment in the class stands at 19 people. I had originally intended to limit the class to 8 people, because I had only one Mindstorms NXT kit for the students to use. When I found that the enrollment was up to 19, I had to reconsider some things. I purchased one additional Mindstorms kit, for later donation to a local elementary school, and I was able to secure the loan of a third kit from another school's Robotics Club. With three kits available, I can break the class into two groups of six and one group of seven.

ALIR is providing a classroom (the Art Room), which has plenty of table space for robot work, and which includes a computer, projector, and pull-down screen. Since the students will be programming and testing the robots during most of the class, I'll need to provide laptop computers. I have three laptops available, so there will be one laptop per group.

The first class meeting will be used for familiarization with the Mindstorms NXT robotic elements: sensors, computer, motors, and development software. The groups will be given a simple task for the robot to perform: move in a straight line for a specified distance.

I plan to update this blog at least once a week until the end of the course.

Questions and comments are most welcome.