Making Robots

I run 10-12 week courses on making robots, usually aimed at children and families, with up to around 12 participants. During the courses we build robots from scratch learning the foundations of electronics and programming along the way. The robots are controlled using an Arduino microcontroller board which can be programmed to control the motors, read from the sensors, and make decisions on what to do. The robots will have both collision sensors and ultrasonic detectors so they can detect walls before crashing into them.

Ideally each session will be 1.5 - 2 hours long. During most sessions at least one new electronic component will be introduced, discussed and experimented with. Then later on in the session a new programming concept will be introduced. Each week I’ll provide documentation covering what we’ve learnt in the lesson, usually going into a bit more detail, and suggesting a little homework. By the end of the course each student should have a fair idea how to continue experimenting with electronics and code themselves. Though more importantly, hopefully they will have a belief that they can make things that initially seem too complicated.

Each student will keep their robots, a kit of assorted electronic components, all the documentation that I’ll provide, and a datasheet(manual) for their robot.

The robots shown here were made by 15 year olds. I hadn’t planned it but they asked me about adding remote control so we added that functionality together. They also ended up modifying their robots to have a “weapon”, a dangling string that was rotated by a servo to hit the other robots.