Cynthia Vaskis
SLM521 Spring
2004
Web Quest Assignment – Part
5
4/21/04
File: webquep5.htm
Web Quest Part 5 –
Design your Own Robot
Mars Pathfinder meets Mars rover Spirit
Introduction
- If you could build a robot, what would it do for you and what type of
environment would it live in? Would it
be able to do your homework for you or be your tutor in math and science or
even English (write your papers for you)?
Would you play baseball with it when you couldn’t find a friend to play
with? Will robots be used as chauffeurs
in the future or taxi cab drivers? Can
they detect and respond to danger quicker?
Process Part 5 – Individual student will draw a robot
design. Additional option is to build
their robot design if materials are available.
The student is to design
their own robot on graph paper or use a drawing tool on the computer. They should describe how each part operates,
how it moves, sees, and interacts with the world. The student should clearly define the robot’s
purpose or “mission” goals, what capabilities it should have, how mobile it
will be to accomplish its goals, and what type of body structure it will have
(how many limbs and for what purpose).
If building materials are available (see LEGO web sites below to
purchase robot design kits), have the student build their robot design (for
extra credit) and check their efforts against the Rubric
Evaluation Chart.
If the student has seen the
previous Dropin#1
and Dropin#2
lessons or studied different coordinate systems, the student should discuss what types of coordinate systems
they will use in their robot and for which parts. Sometimes a Cartesian coordinate system
locates appendages on the main part of the vehicle but another coordinate
system, such as a Polar coordinate system, may be used to rotate any appendages
(arms, heads).
Name the major parts of their robot that are used for
the following functions that apply:
to hold everything together, to move, to get energy, to store energy, to see,
to touch or handle things, to communicate with Earth Mission Control directly
(or the robot designer such as a computer hand held control device) and to keep
warm if needed. Define what robotic
parts might be used to collect samples or perform experiments. Define what type of power is used to run your
robot and the energy source. The student
might want to review an example of how to draw their robot design as in Dropin#5
under origin
labeling process and the example
drawing of an object with some labels.
The student should make a
detailed sketch of their robot’s design and identify all the parts. They can use the graph paper
web site provided on-line (and print it out), your own graph paper, or a
drawing tool on the computer and use a table function with many rows and
columns to create graph paper.
Consider these ideas when designing your robot.
A robot’s design depends
upon its purpose and environment. Here
are some things to consider when designing the robot.
1. How will it assist humans, perform
experiments, explore the environment and relay data to humans.
2. What are the parts of the robot such as its
body chassis, appendages, vision, hearing, touch sensitivity, mobility (wheels,
walk, glides, fly, jumps, rolls – does it go into roll mode to go down a steep
incline and stops by putting out breaker feet), Intelligence/Reasoning ability
(Expert systems, fuzzy logic, neural nets), and energy source (batteries, solar
arrays).
3. How will the robot interact with its
environment and people?
4. The environment plays an important role in
how one designs the robot for durability and strength.
For Activity Evaluation see the Rubric
chart – The student should be
able to explain in detail every part of his/her robot design and describe its
purpose or mission goals and how the robot design will carry out those
goals. If the students are able to build a robot then he/she should
demonstrate that the robot can achieve its goals without human intervention
unless there are required commands. Some
vision cameras are available from a LEGO VISION web site under the LEGO
MINDSTORMS web site. See the LEGO sites
listed in the Resources
List.
Intelligent Reasoning in Robots
A human reasons and takes
action by first evaluating what he or she believes the truth is about the world
around them (“Just the facts, mamm”, from Dragnet),
what the possible outcomes may be based on knowledge and experience, and what
he or she believes they can reasonably do to affect the situation to go forward
the way they would like it to. A robot
can follow the same line of reasoning if their programming has been setup to do
so. A robot could respond as a logical
and wise person would if the environment was well known and most of the likely
outcomes could be identified ahead of time.
Some programming languages, such as LISP and possibly C++, can allow the
ability to create lines of code “on the fly” when the regular code detects a
reason to do so. Such a reason may be
that the current program has not foreseen a possible outcome and wants to
include that possibility for consideration in future encounters with the
situation that produced it. This area of
Artificial Intelligence is called “learning” or “self adaptation”. In this respect, a robot can behave similar
to a human but, remember, the robot must still be programmed by a human
initially to do so. What we are really
talking about when we say that a robot is intelligent, is really that the
programmer put part of his intelligence into the computer programs’ reasoning
abilities. When you are reacting to a
robot that has just learned to do something new, you are really interacting
indirectly with that programmer.
Visit these web sites to get insight about how others
designed a robot.
Design Concept for a
Nuclear Reactor-Powered Mars Rover
http://content.aip.org/APCPCS/v654/i1/376_1.html
Educator’ Guide to
Robotics Spacecraft – Robots: Like Us! – Read the author’s view about how
robots and humans are similar and different.
http://www.solarviews.com/eng/edu/robotsc.htm
Build
your very own Mars Pathfinder Spacecraft Model!
http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/MPF/mpf/education/cutouts.html
Robot Helper
Design Challenge - Tour the International Space Station video
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/projects/space/robotdesign/
Build
your very own Mars Pathfinder Spacecraft Model!
http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/MPF/mpf/education/cutouts.html
Build
Your Own Pathfinder model
http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/MPF/mpf/education/cutouts.html
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ri-seminar/www/2004.January.23.html