Robots to the Rescue
Procedure
1. Copy the table below in your journal.
Trial 1
Watching Car
Trial 2
Watching Car
Trial 3
Watching Car
Average
Trial 1
Watching Monitor
Trial 2
Watching Monitor
Trial 3
Watching Monitor
Average
Time to Finish
Route
Number of
Crashes
Time to Finish
Route
Number of
Crashes
2. Choose a robot to build and build it. Test the robot to make sure it functions correctly.
ASK MRS. DRUMMOND TO COME OVER TO YOUR GROUP!
3. Use duct tape to attach your wireless camera (and battery) to your robot. By combining a sensor with a
mobile car, you have now made a simple robot. Our robot is shown in Figure 3 below.
Figure 3. Our searchand-rescue robot,
made from a toy RC
car and a wireless
video camera.
2. Connect the receiver of your wireless camera to a TV or computer monitor. Ask an adult volunteer to help
you with this step if necessary. (You may also need to read the instructions for your wireless camera).
3. Practice driving the car around while walking behind the car and looking at it. Also practice driving it by
looking only at the TV screen. Once you are comfortable driving the car both ways, move to the next step.
4. Plan a route to use as a test course. Sketch a map of your route (include obstacles like furniture), and plot
out the route on this map. This is exactly what scientists, engineers, or robot operators would do. For
example, NASA uses satellite images of Mars to plan routes for the Mars rovers. (To see for yourself,
search Google for "Mars rover route.") Police or military officials may use a map of a city or floor plan of a
building to plan routes for their robots.
You can imagine that the map of your route is actually the site of a real-life disaster scenario. For
example, you could pretend that you are navigating your robot through a collapsed building after an
earthquake to look for survivors; or you could plant a "suspicious package" (which may be a bomb) that
your robot needs to investigate; or you could pretend that there has been a chemical spill and your robot
needs to take environmental readings to see if the air is safe for humans to breathe. In any of these
situations, using a robot to explore helps make things safer for human emergency and rescue workers.
Figure 4 below shows an example map of a house, and an imagined scenario where the robot must reach
a chemical spill in a factory after an earthquake.
Figure 4. An example map showing a planned route through a house (top), and an imaginary disaster scenario
based on the layout of the house (bottom).
6. Try driving the route while you are walking behind the car, so you can see it the entire time (remember that
in a real-life disaster scenario, this would not be safe to do!). Ask a volunteer to use a stopwatch to time
how long it takes you to drive from start to finish. Also have the volunteer keep track of how many times you
crash the car into something. After you finish, write the numbers down in your lab notebook.
7. Now try driving the route while looking only at the TV with the video images coming from the wireless
camera. Do not look at the car! This might be easiest with the TV in a separate room that is not part of your
planned route. Again, ask a volunteer to time the trip from start to finish and keep track of the number of
times you crash the car into something.
Note: Your RC car and wireless camera will each have a limited range. Depending on the size of the room, you may
need to limit the length of your route to stay within range of both the RC car and the camera. If you do this, be sure to
go back to step 5 and do the shorter route while following the car.
8. Repeat the experiment at least two more times, so you should have six trials total — three while following
the car, and three while watching the car only on TV. If you have time, you can do more trials. Add rows to
your data table if needed.
9. Make a graph of your results to compare the trials where you followed the car and the trials where you
watched only the TV. Make one graph for the time it took you to complete the course and one graph for the
number of crashes you had. Plot the individual point from each trial on your graph. You can also calculate
an average for all the trials and plot that point on the graph (be sure that the average point looks different
from the individual data points). Figure 5 below shows examples of how to set up these graphs.
Figure 5. Example of how to label the axis for your graphs. The graph on the left is used to compare the time to complete the
course and the graph on the right compares the number of crashes while watching the car or watching only the TV.
9. Using the graphs you made in Step 8, compare your results for driving while watching the car and driving
while watching only the monitor. Which method was faster? Which method had fewer crashes? Which one
did you think was easier to do?
10. It would also be interesting to see if you got better at driving the car over time, as you got more practice and
did more trials. You can do this by plotting the time it took you to finish or the number of crashes for the trial
number for each type of test. Figure 6 below shows a blank example graph.
Figure 6. An example of how to label the axis on a line plot graph comparing the number of crashes for
each trial. You could make a similar graph for the time it took you to complete the course.
11. Examine the graphs you made in Step 10. Did you get better at driving the car the more you drove it? Did
the time to complete the course and the number of crashes go down? Did they stay about the same, or
change greatly from trial to trial? How do you think this affects your results?