Robots to the Rescue — By Jill Crisman
Jill is a Chief Scientist at Next Century, which basically means that she is in charge of ensuring that Next Century does cutting edge software development and research. Jill is passionate about ensuring that we take out brightest people and think critically about how software could solve some of the world’s hardest problems. With that in mind, it isn’t a surprise that Jill designed a lesson that used robots. In her session at our most recent Women in Computing Day she created a lesson where girls had to take small robots and get them out of a maze. This was such an amazing hand’s on lesson. You could see the girls transfixed on how to get the small robots to do what they wanted. It was no longer about the code and it was all about the solution. Below Jill details her session.
If you’re interested, you can check out the other blog posts from our latest Women in Computing Day: Drawing with Code, Design Thinking: 5 Chairs, and 3D Visualization.
Overview
Robots can perform dangerous tasks — sparing people from having to risk their own lives. Robot now spray paint all kinds of products, saving factory workers the danger of inhaling fumes. However, we really needed robotic assistance for more unstructured tasks — for example stopping the nuclear meltdown the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power after the earthquake and tsunami on March 9, 2011. Unfortunately, the robots were not yet ready to help with this task.
To help the girls think about how robots could help in more unstructured tasks we designed an activity using robots that they could program. We started by showing the girls the results of some research on robotics performing tasks needed at the Fukushima plant — both of successes and failures — to demonstrate can see how fragile the capabilities are. This demonstration showed that our world needs programmers, engineers, and scientists, to help build the robotic technology to help with disaster relief and to help save human lives.
Then, in this session, the young ladies took their first steps into learning about how to program robots for search and rescue. They programming robots to rush through a maze of “rubble” — taking imaginary “supplies” to earthquake victims. We used a small robot, the Sphero Mini, which we programed from tablets. We saw how to program the robot to perform step-by-step to navigate the maze and get to the victims. Then we divided into teams and write programs for the robot. At the end of the session, we had a competition to see which team’s robot can most quickly bring supplies through the rubble to the victims.
Materials
The following list outlines the materials needed and approximate budget for the materials required for each team.
Sphero Mini Robot
- Number needed: 6
- Cost: $300. (Note, sometimes there are deals if you sign up for their newsletter.)
- Notes: Each robot can run 45 minutes on a 60-minute charge. If each session runs for 45 minutes, three can charge while three are being used.
USB AC/DC converter blocks
- Number needed: 2
- Notes: Each robot comes with the cable for charging, but not the AC/DC adapter.
Smart devices
- Number needed: 3
- Notes: Be sure to have them fully charged.
Mazes
- Number needed: 3
- Notes: We used thick wooden blocks that couldn’t be easily pushed around by the Spheros.
Laptop
- Number needed: 1
- Notes: Used to show the demonstration at the beginning of each session.
Wifi
- Number needed: All of it.
- Notes: Be sure to test your devices and robots on the wifi before the session to clean up any run-time errors.
Recommendations
This session almost ran itself. The girls were ready to get their hands in there and play with the robots with very little prompting. That said, there was some structure that was built in to ensure the success of the session. The first is that we divided the girls into small groups and we had one volunteer per group. This ensured that the girls each got a turn without having to wait too long for their own turn. It also allowed the girls to learn from what the group as a whole was doing. By having one volunteer per group it also facilitated more guided instruction.
The second bit of structure that was built in was the technology itself. We used the base robot program that comes with Sphero. This shows how to make the robot move forward, top, and then back. By having the girls start with this simple program enabled them to have basic building blocks to start playing themselves. Paired with that, having tablets for each group fo girls, so that the whole session was very hands on, was useful. It was easy to pass the tablet around but also for the tablet to function as a display for the whole group.
Having someone who is fairly experienced with the robots can help as well. It doesn’t take much time if you already know how to code, to become an expert in these fun little robots. However, your volunteers probably will not be experts. So having one person that can troubleshoot and move between groups of girls can make the session run smoothly.
As mentioned above, we used heavy wooden blocks to make the maze with was useful. This is because Women in Computing Day hosts girls from age 9 to 13. The younger girls could spent the whole session with a basic maze. Older girls could make their maze more complex. This allowed the session to stay relevant for different age ranges. The older girls were able to get to the point where they “decorated” their programs with flashing lights, sounds, and speech.
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