Robotics Week: Design, Build, Automate

The robots are coming! And they're here to stay. Robots are appearing in all walks of life, from building products in factories, to mowing your lawn.

The robotics Design, Build, Automate week extends our popular Raspberry Pi robotics course to 5 days of focussed creation and learning. Start out in this fascinating field by building and programming your own remote controlled robot. Then make the robot drive itself by following a line, avoiding obstacles and detecting light. Add a camera and use it to make your robot respond to shapes and people. Explore voice control to make your robot respond to your verbal commands! There will be plenty of competitions to motivate you!

This challenging course does not use a kit but builds the robot from component parts and direct programming of controllers. Coding is in Python.

This course is an ideal introduction for those looking to explore robotics for fun or as a career.

Course Outline

Level

For beginners up for a challenge No specific skills required, but any programming skills would be put to good use.

Description

Five days of robotic activities. Build a remote-controlled robot powered by a Raspberry Pi computer. Then make the robot drive itself!

Detail

Python Programming Essentials

We will take a quick overview of the programming concepts we will need for the course.

Anatomy of a Robot

We will examine a robot like the one you will build to understand the component parts.

Working with the Raspberry Pi

This small, cheap computer will be the brains of the robot. You will turn it on and explore its capabilities.

Working with controller boards

You will attach a controller board to the Pi and use Python code to control motors, sensors and lights.

Adding a remote control

You will learn how to connect and code a remote control and write more code to make the robot respond to user commands.

Building the body

You will take a look at the physical principles, design the robot and assemble it. The robot will be cut from plywood to your design specification.

Coding

You will code the robot to respond to commands, including moving forward, backwards, turning, spinning and stopping. Students will be encouraged to use a computational problem solving approach.

Line following

You will attach a line-following sensor and develop some code and algorithms to guide the robot along the line.

Obstacle avoidance

You will attach an ultrasonics sensor and develop some code and algorithms to help the robot navigate around the room without human intervention!

Advanced Activities

Choose from - Robotic vision: You will attach a camera and develop some code to analyse what the robot sees, making it detect objects and people. - Voice control: You will use voice control to issue spoken commands to the robot. - Your own project: You will design and implement your own robotic challenge.

Tweaking, testing and optimisation

You will fine-tune and test the robot.

Competitions

You will compete against other student's robots in a range of different challenges!

Skills you will pick up in the course

Key skill categories

• Robotics

• Python programming

• Electronics

• Engineering

• Problem solving

• Algorithms

On successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Build a simple remote controlled robot.

• Describe the physical design principles for a wheeled robot.

• Add and program light sensors for robot navigation.

• Add and program ultrasonic sensors for robot navigation.

• Add and program a camera for robotic vision.

• Program a robot for voice control.

• Analyse computational problems using modelling techniques.

• Breakdown complex computational problems into manageable tasks.

• Write Python code to implement robotic behaviours.