Robotics

I’ll be volunteering at Taylor Creek Public School in Scarborough again this year. We’re hoping for a less disruptive school environment!

We’ll be using the mBot robots from Makeblock to get familiar with coding, machine control, some cool mathematics, and a bit of physics. The mBot uses an Arduino Uno control card, has a nice interface to many input and output devices, and can be programmed with Scratch or Arduino C.

Here’s a snapshot of a bit of Scratch code we’ll be working for PID motion control and using the gyro sensor for directional input. Scratch was developed at MIT as an educational tool. It is very easy to learn, and can be extended to very complex control projects. The Makeblock version first converts the Scratch to Arduino C, and then compiles and uploads the code to the mBot. Students can then view the Arduino C code for a good introduction into professional machine programming.