Discovery · Systems Project 3
Who's Driving?
Some machines wait for you. Some don't need you at all.
Student PIN:
Try It — Move a Person
Pick a partner. One of you is the driver. One of you is the robot.
Put a chair in the middle of the room. The robot has to walk around it and touch the far wall.
⚠ Rules for the Robot
Keep your eyes open. But do only what you are told. Do not help. Do not guess.
If the driver says “walk,” you walk. You do not stop until you are told to stop.
Round 1 — talk them through it
The driver stands and watches. Say each step out loud as the robot goes.
You can see what happens. You can fix it right away.
Round 2 — write it down first
Now swap jobs. This time the driver may not talk at all.
Write the whole plan on paper first. Every step. Then hand the paper to the robot.
The robot reads it and follows it. The driver stays quiet the whole time.
| Step | What the robot must do |
|---|---|
| 1 | |
| 2 | |
| 3 | |
| 4 | |
| 5 | |
| 6 |
What went wrong in Round 2?
Which round was harder for the driver? Say why.
You Just Did Both Kinds
In Round 1 you were in charge the whole time. You could fix things as they went wrong.
In Round 2 you had to think of everything first. Once you handed over the paper, you were done.
Round 2 is how your Botball robot works.
Learn It — Three Kinds of Control
Machines can be sorted by one question. Who is in charge while it runs?
Remote Control
It does not move on its own. A person must control it.
Let go of the buttons and it stops.
Examples: A toy car. A drone with a pilot. A crane.
Semi-Autonomous
A person controls some of it. The machine does the rest by itself.
You share the job.
Examples: A car that parks itself. A plane on autopilot.
Autonomous
It moves around on its own. No person is controlling it.
You start it and step back.
Examples: A robot vacuum. A Mars rover. Your Botball robot.
Which one is your robot?
Your Botball robot is .
You may touch it before the match. You may not touch it during the match.
That is the whole reason your code has to be so careful. Nobody can help it once it starts.
Being Autonomous Costs You Something
A robot has a person watching. If a cube rolls away, the person just steers around it.
An autonomous robot has nobody. If a cube rolls away, it drives right into the empty spot anyway.
You get speed and you get to run many robots at once. You give up the chance to fix things.
The line is fuzzy
Some machines are easy to sort. Many are not.
A dishwasher runs by itself once you press start. But it never moves anywhere.
A machine sits in the middle. You do part of the job. It does the rest.
When two people sort the same machine differently, that is worth talking about. Both of you noticed something real.
Do It — Sort the World
1. Build a course
Set up three or four things to walk around. Chairs and boxes work well.
Pick a start spot and a finish spot. Mark them both.
2. Program a person
Write a plan that gets your robot through the whole course. Write it before anyone moves.
⚠ One Leg at a Time
To move forward you must tell each leg to move. And you must say how far.
“Walk to the door” is not a step. “Move your left leg one step forward” is a step.
Hand it over. Say nothing. Watch what happens.
3. Fix it and run it again
Find the step that went wrong. Change it. Run the whole plan again.
Keep going until your robot finishes the course.
| Try | What I changed | How far it got |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | ||
| 2 | ||
| 3 | ||
| 4 |
4. Talk about what was hard
Tell your partner what you learned. Then write down the two biggest things.
| Thing I learned | Why it caused trouble |
|---|---|
Most teams find the same things. Left and right get mixed up. Steps are too big. Nobody said when to stop.
5. Three posters
Your class needs three big sheets of paper. Head them Remote Control, Semi-Autonomous, and Autonomous.
Think of machines. Write each one on a sticky note. Stick it on the poster where you think it goes.
Write down four of your own here.
| Machine | Which poster |
|---|---|
6. Walk around and look
Now visit all three posters. Read what other people put up.
Look for one you would move to a different poster.
Why does it belong there instead?
7. The hard ones
Some machines will not sit still in one group. Try these.
| Machine | Which kind? | What makes it tricky |
|---|---|---|
| A dishwasher | ||
| A lift in a building | ||
| A robot vacuum you send to one room | ||
| A traffic light |
Did your class agree on all four? Which one caused the biggest argument?
8. Your own robot, minute by minute
Your Botball robot is autonomous during a match. But not every minute of the day.
Write which kind it is at each of these times.
| Right now my robot is… | Which kind? |
|---|---|
| Sitting on the table with no program | |
| Being dragged by me on the Motors screen | |
| Waiting for me to press the A button | |
| Running its program in a match |
Score It — Checkpoint
Sort these
| Machine | Which kind? |
|---|---|
| A drone with a person holding the controls | |
| A Mars rover driving across a crater | |
| A car that steers itself but needs your hands on the wheel | |
| Your Botball robot during a match |
Can you do it again?
Think about it
In Round 1 you could fix mistakes right away. In Round 2 you could not. Which felt safer? Which got the job done faster?
Your robot cannot see that a cube has rolled away. It drives to the empty spot anyway. Whose mistake is that?
A Mars rover takes about 20 minutes to get a message from Earth. Why does that make it autonomous, whether anyone wanted it that way or not?
Next
Writing your plan on paper worked. But a long list of steps is hard to read.
In Systems Project 4 — Draw the Plan, you learn to draw a plan instead of writing one.
You are also ready for Coding Project 4. That is the first run your robot does on its own.
When you are finished, press the button to turn in your work and save a copy.
KIPR · Botball Explorer · Discovery