Class+no+4

Our fourth lesson was the most interesting one yet in my opinion, because we got to build robots. We were allowed to chose our groups, and I was in a group with Nadia, Lyuba, and Ottavia. Then Mr. Emanuele gave out boxes full of Lego joints and pieces, we got box number one. Each box contained the pieces we needed to create our robot (all of the groups had the same robots). We had loads of fun building our robot. We worked quite well as a team, and quickly set up a rotation, where each person got to do one step, and everyone searched for the correct pieces required and offered help if the ‘creator’ was having difficulty or was making any mistakes (as we often were). I managed to work quite well actually, and I believe that this is because when I was younger my dad and I used to build all kinds of things with Legos, and I still help my brother with any problems he has when he is constructing Lego cars and my dad isn’t around to help him out. The first thing we did was build a kind of stand with wheels for the computer. It was attached to two motors which were inserted into plugs B and C which were attached to the computer. We then 'told' the computer what to do and when we pressed the go button everything worked perfectly. We were quite happy with our first success. Next we incorporated a sound sensor into plug 2 and then we tested our robot again, and once more everything worked perfectly. Next we installed an ultrasonic sensor which looked a lot like eyes on top of the robot, into plug 4, and then, after testing it we ran into some difficulty. We discovered that we were missing a piece, our reflective light sensor. When we found out, we asked Mr. Emanuele what we should do, and since he couldn't find our missing sensor in any of the other boxes he told us to simply skip that installment. When we were about half way through with building our next sensor, Abi came up to us asking for some help, and when he found out that we were missing a sensor he checked that it wasn't in his groups' box where it ended up being. We were thrilled by this discovery, and decided to work on it after having finished installed our touch sensor into plug 1. We installed the reflected light sensor into plug 3. After this we installed a little light at the very base of the robot, next to the bigger wheels, into plug A, but none of us were really certain what it was for, we presumed that it was something for the reflected light sensor or something like that. By the end of the lesson we had almost finished installing all of the parts, we were only missing two, and we also noticed that we had run out of plugs, and so if we had wanted to install some other part we would be in the need of taking others off. We reorganized the room, and finally class was over. Our complex little robot was overall very fun to build. Compared to a living thing it is different because it doesn't have instincts but commands. But this robot was better than the ones that we had researched during our last lesson because one could change its commands and functions always, and there were certain things that he 'knew' how to do without having to be specifically told. This robot wasn't monotone (if one can describe it this way) it didn't mimic feelings, but it was more fun and interactive because you didn't have to pay extraordinary amounts of money to have it, build it, and keep it, unlike some of the robots that we saw last time which needed constant attention and specific environments to work properly. I enjoyed learning about this robot more than I did about all of the others from the previous lesson because it was more stimulating and user friendly in my opinion. You could change this robot depending on how you built it, and more than likely if one were to try to build a completely different robot with the exact same pieces they could. Our robot was like a puzzle which could change picture depending on how you but the pieces together, the robots we learned about were like stuffed animals that were cute but not soft so particularly loveable. (I hope this last analogy is clear enough)
 * //Lesson 4 – 15 October 2010 //**