What Is Your Idea of a Robot?

We posed this question to a group of children at the start of a pilot program held recently.

Listed below are answers given by the kids:
1. artificial intelligence
2. help to stir coffee
3. control by people
4. enable me to work more for less
5. help to clean the house
6. perform task where it is too difficult to be performed by a person
7. explore inhabitable places
8. explore the unknown
9. unravel mystery
10. sensing danger, set off alarms

A good wish list. How many of these are reality or mere fantasy?

We started off with the coffee stirrer and the kids had no problem in assembling a device to make coffee. It had a motor and attached to it was a shaft with paddle at the other end. A coffee cup was placed and the motor was switched on, and the coffee was stirred but not shaken.

The kids became more adventurous, and they began to attach sensors like angle/rotation and temperature to the device. They wanted to make the best coffee by stirring it so that it can form a good head and the temperature will be just right for a sip. With this we kick started our pilot program.

Next: Design & Build - Selecting a Project To Work With

Keywords: robotics, competency-based learning, datalogging, VBA programming