Project Overview









Introduction
Clawbot Build
Design Modification
Design Development
Programming
Sensors
Advanced Sensors
Open design challenges
Project evaluation
Todays Challenge
Maze Navigation
Today’s challenge is to explore an area and collect in rubbish. The brief sets out the following task:
“Design and programme your robot to scout around an arena and grab items of rubbish, including plastic
cups. The robot must work either controlled or autonomous. The cups will be standing up (not lying down) to
support your robot in initially grabbing them with a claw device.”
In your teams, discuss the challenge and decide if you want to create an autonomous or controller operated
robot solution.
Controller operation
OR
Autonomous
LESSON 07
LESSON 7 STARTER
Learning objective: Assess a design challenge and identify the criteria for success. Develop sketches and notes to
support the redesign of a robot. Redesign a robot using sensors to meet a design challenge.
In your Notebook…
Task 1:
Note down all the elements of the challenge and
draw a detailed drawing of the arena you are going
to compete over set down by your teacher.
Things to note:
- dimensions of any items you need to interact with
(objects and parts of the arena)
- number of objects in the arena you need to
interact with
- the time limit you have to complete the challenge
- any initial issues you have identified based on
your existing robot build
Key words: Programmable, environment, design, manufacturing and application
design solutions using sensors
Design Brief
An area of land has been littered with rubbish, and the council have decided to use the
clearing of it as an experiment to test out council robots that will collect-in different forms
of litter. Your design team are in charge of developing a robot that will collect in plastic,
mainly plastic cups.
Openly brainstorm ideas about how you might approach this design challenge.
Consider the following things you need to know:
- the size of the cups
- the colour of the cups
- the location of the cups
- the sensors you could employ to identify and pick the cups
- what could go wrong when picking the cups up using a claw
- where the cups might be stored once collected by the robot
design solutions using sensors
What can you achieve with your Clawbot?
Create three design solutions and write them down into your
notebooks as follows
1. If anything was possible (autonomous and joystick
operation)
- describe your solution if there was no limit on the kit you
had
2. What you can achieve by combining programming and
rebuild (autonomous operation)
- describe your solution that will require you to rewrite the
programme on the cortex, and rebuild the clawbot build
3. A solution you could operate without programming
(joystick operation)
- describe your solution which employs rebuilding the robot,
but not reprogramming the cortex to be autonomous.
design solutions using sensors
design solutions using sensors
Challenge Time
“Design and programme your robot to scout around an arena and grab items of rubbish, including plastic cups. The robot must work either controlled or
autonomous. The cups will be standing up (not lying down) to support your robot in initially grabbing them with a claw device.”
LESSON 7 PLENARY
As a class, let us consider the following questions?
A. What considerations did you make when considering how to go about picking up the cups?
B. How could you modify the challenge to make it easy for one sensor to work best?
C. How could you combine two or more sensors to give you a better outcome?
D. If you had to come up with a unique sensor, what would it sense to help you complete this
challenge?
Summary
Learning objective: Assess a design challenge and identify the criteria for success. Develop sketches and notes to
support the redesign of a robot. Redesign a robot using sensors to meet a design challenge.
Today you have:
 Assessed a design brief and identified the criteria for success.
 Explored different design ideas using sketching and annotation.
 Redeveloped a robot to meet a design challenge and assessed its performance.