Robotics I - Introduction to Robotics and Programming
A course designed for students who have little or no experience with building robots. Beginning with the fundamental principles of construction and programming, we'll branch into the use of sensors, debugging techniques, and gears. Students use the Lego MINDSTORMS kit and ROBOTC programming environment from Carnegie Mellon to do hands-on exploration of all of these topics. Engineering notebooks are a central part of the course, and they are required to document their design and development process for review by the teacher. This is a project-based class that places emphasis on teamwork, risk-free experimentation, and student-led topics. Students who take Robotics I are well-prepared for Robotics II and more advanced robotics engineering.
On the pure programming side, students will work with the Processing programming environment to learn how programs are constructed and the building blocks that are used. The learning is also project-based but is more independent, and is accompanied by written work to teach and reinforce the basic principles of engineering. Programming principles taught include variables, functions, loops, if/then/else conditional statements, object-oriented programming (OOP), and much more. Processing is a language primarily for visual artists, but is also a great way for a beginner to learn programming with visual feedback.
Students who take Robotics I are well-prepared for Robotics II and more advanced robotics engineering.
Our textbook is "Learning Processing" by Daniel Shiffman. It contains tons of exercises, lessons, step-by-step instructions, and lots of supporting code and examples online to help you learn to program.
See our Lincoln Robotics YouTube channel for movies of our creations.
Also check out our Lincoln Robotics Wiki for info about our projects and part descriptions for the LEGO Mindstorms Education NXT kit we use to built our bots.
Homework 2/21 - Exercise 4-4
Do Exercise 4-4 on page 53, but only for the first picture on the left. Challenge for the bored: Do the exercise for all three pictures. Play around with variables for everything, even color! Remember that mouseX and mouseY are also variables that can be used...
Posted Thursday 02/21/13 1:59 PM
Homework 2/12 - Create a character
Using what you know so far in Processing, do Exercise 1-7 and create a character using the basic shape functions - point(), line(), rect(), ellipse(), fill(), and stroke(). You may also use background() and size() to set the stage. (Use size(200,200) to create the right size background.)
Do this first on paper, then in Processing. Take 15-20 minutes for homework, then we'll work on it in class on Wed., 2/13.
Posted Tuesday 02/12/13 2:53 PM
Bot Hockey assignment
The rules for Bot Hockey have been posted to the Robotics I Google Drive collection. Videos of our practice sessions to follow soon, as your bots progress in capabilities. Time to start programming an autonomous mode too!
Posted Monday 11/26/12 10:13 AM
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Resources
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Constructopedia v2.1
From the Tufts Center for Engineering Education and Outreach at
legoengineering.com. The NXT Constructopedia is a set of building hints for the NXT. It contains smaller hints and a few larger models. Its aim
is to provide users with inspiration to build their own advanced
creations.
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