Working on tangram puzzles.
This year, 13 girls from the Grove City Girl Scout Service Unit came to Grove City College to earn their robot badges. Girl Scouts has added some new badges this year. They include: showcasing robots, programming robots, and designing robots. The group contacted Grove City College for assistance in obtaining these badges.
Dr. Mohr, Professor of Electrical Engineering, said that the engineering department had some Lego Mindstorm robot kits that had been used previously for an Introduction to Engineering class. Since the kits were not being utilized, the College provided the kits to the Girl Scouts. The kits included wheels and motors, a computer brain called “the brick”, and an ultrasonic range sensor that measures distance.
Once a week for four weeks, the 4th grade girls came to Grove City College to work on designing, programming, and testing their robots. The goal was to be able to program the robot to stop before hitting a wall and then turn around and go another direction. The first week involved introductions and an overview. The second week was building the robot. The girls were split into four groups of three or four and came up with a design plan. The third week involved creating tangrams and writing instructions for others to solve the puzzle to practice programming. The final week was programming the robots on the computer using the software provided by the kit.
Programming the robot.
This robot features a “unicorn horn.”
The completed robot.
