Class+no+5

During our fifth lesson, we worked on giving the robots which we had built last lesson commands to follow. This was a task that seemed hard at first but that then progressed into something which turned out to be quite easy if carefully thought about for a second. We required computers and a special program, and since our previous groups of four or five were too big, we split into pairs and triplets. I was in a group with Nadia, while Lyuba, Ottavia and Sara (who had missed the lesson where we had built the robots and was lacking a group) buddied up. Firstly, Mr. Emanuele said that we had to command our robot to make a perfect of almost perfect square. This was the hardest thing that we had to do, even though overall it was quite simple, probably because it was our first assignment and we still needed to understand how to make the program work properly. There were various icons that stood for various things. We first took the movement icon, and dragged it over to our work station on the screen. Then, a type of toolbar appeared underneath, and we tried to understand how to make the robot work. It took us various attempts to make the robot move around in a somewhat square-like appearance, and a couple more to make it move around in a complete square. In the end the correct commands were: Forewords with motors B and C for 2 seconds, then 1 rotation of the wheel with motor C, and then we repeated this three more times until the square was complete. As I stated in my previous log, there were two motors, called B and C; B is the right motor, while C is the left one. Changing which motors the robot was using made the robot turn. While changing the number of rotations that the wheel made changed the degree at which it turned. To get the directions that we had ‘created’ on the computer to the robot, we needed a USB cord which we attached to the computer and the robot, and finally we pressed the download button and after a couple of seconds the file had been inserted into the robot. There were some problems though with the downloading of the files and the testing of the robots, this is because we had one robot for two groups, and one USB cord for four groups, so we ended up having some discussions about this, but overall everything went quite smoothly. Our next order that we had to give to our robot was to do an infinite amount of squares. Mr. Emanuele showed us that we could achieve this by simply taking the loop button, dragging it onto the work space, and then taking the first two steps from our previous order and putting them ‘into’ the loop button. So in the end, to make a forever repeating square, one must take the loop button and insert the forward movement button with motors B+C and the movement button with only one rotation of the wheel and only motor C. When this was explained to us it was an extremely easy task. Next we needed our robot to move forward for one meter exactly. We managed this by finding the circumference (this was easy since the diameter was on the wheel) and then dividing 100 cm by the circumference. It turned out, that our answer was 5.684 (this number has been rounded). So at this point we dragged a movement button into our work station and told motors B+C to move forward for 5.684 rotations of the wheel. When we verified our results, we found that we were correct. Our last challenges had to do with the ultrasonic sensor (which was situated at the top of the robot and made it look a lot like the robot had eyes). In the first challenge we simply had to make the robot stop when it sensed an object in front of it, in the second instead, it had to turn to the right (with motor C) when it sensed an obstacle. For the first challenge, we used the forward movement button for an unlimited amount of time, then the ultrasonic wait button, and finally the stop movement button. For the second challenge instead, we used the same first two buttons, but after we told it to stop, and then to turn 1.2 rotations to the right with motor C, and finally to keep going forward again. I enjoyed the challenges with the ultrasonic sensor the very best, because we could ‘tease’ the robot by putting our hand in front of its ‘eyes’ and make it change direction. When class was almost over we decided to put the commands that we had used for our last challenge and put them into a loop button, so that we could stop the robot whenever we wanted to and not have to make it re start again manually but automatically. If one were to compare the language of robots (computers, and anything else electronic as well) with any of the languages of humans, probably the mathematical language would be the one that it is the most similar to it. This is because the robotics language is made up of 0s and 1s in various patters, creating different ‘words’ (orders though is probably a more adequate term, since most, if not all, robots can’t think for themselves), therefore, since there are numbers in mathematics as well, I think that these two languages are the most similar. Yet, the language of mathematics is similar to the one that is spoken everyday between humans, no matter where they are from. This is because all of the symbols and all of the formulas have a specific meaning, just like in our language. So even though numbers (symbols and the various letters used in mathematics) and letters aren’t particularly similar physically, objectively they are quite similar. Also, when one thinks of it, the languages that we humans use differ from one place to another, which makes humans different, and often incapable of speaking and understanding each other, but with the language of mathematics and electronics, we are all the same because these two languages are recognized all around the world.
 * //Lesson 5 – 22 October 2010//**