Discover Robotics

Last updated: March 15, 2017

Author Information

Christopher Fuderich
Lancaster Country Day School

Course Details

Description

This curriculum outlines a hands-on workshop on learning robotics for middle and high school students. Robotics is explored through group discussions, instructor guided lessons and experimentation which presents engineering as a broad domain and attempts to bridge classroom lessons to real world applications.

The course uses the Arduino based robot MiniQ 2WD which is an affordable and accessible platform for schools. MATLAB and Simulink are utilized as an intuitive learning environment and as means to implement code on robots. Videos are provided for students to help demonstrate concepts as well as videos for instructors to learn about the Simulink models before carrying out each lesson. The curriculum maps to skills found in the Common Core Standards and the Next Generation Science Standards.

Course Length: 15 hours
Recommended Ages: 10+
No prior programing knowledge is required


Original Course Documents


Course Contents

Unit

Contents

Videos

Unit 1

Unit 2

Unit 3

Unit 4

  • “Stay In Box” Concept
  • Study 5: Ethics In Robotics
  • Line Following:
    • Stay in Box With Line Sensors
    • Two Sensor Line Following
    • Bang Bang Line Following
  • Taking It Further: PID Line Following With Proximity Stop
  • Study 6: Altruistic Robots

Unit 5

 

Resources

1. Robot Hardware: MiniQ Robot (complete kit) by DFRobot

2. Computers with the following installed: MATLAB, Simulink, Stateflow, MATLAB Coder

3. Electrical Tape

4. Flashlights

5. Projector For Mirroring Instructor’s Computer Screen

6. Stands for MiniQ robots (can be 3D printed)

7. AA batteries (4 per miniQ robot)