Today we enjoyed having some new students join us for Lego Robotics.  All 11 kids learned to program the robots how to do both a swing turn and also a point turn.   Swing turns are similar to how you would turn when you're riding your bicycle and a point turn is a sharp 90 degree turn.  In the above photo you can see the kids busy programming their robots for one of the challenges that was performed today. 

The students started off with programming their robots to navigate through a simple maze.  This robot made a nice 90 degree turn within the track allowed inside the maze and the team celebrated a victory.  All three teams were able to program their robots to move through the maze without going outside of the lines.

The next challenge was to program the robot to move around the outside of a square.  This was most easily accomplished by using another new programming concept we learned today, the loop.  A loop is simply telling the robot to perform a task multiple times.  For instance, with the square they told the robot to make a sharp 90 degree turn and then move forward 2 wheel rotations and to loop that process 3 more times to make a perfect square.

I'm so pleased to have these enthusiastic and intelligent students perform these challenges because it's fun to watch how they problem solve glitches with their robots.  They are creative and have done an amazing job of working together in teams.  I am looking forward to next week when we'll learn how to program the robots to avoid obstacles using two different sensors!!!

Tina