Roboteers in Action!
Today everyone in Scafell has been developing the key skills we’ll need to become the next generation of roboteers, designing programs to make our robots do exactly what we wanted (well, sometimes!)
Fran from C-Stem came in with a set of Lego Mindstorm robots, and we’ve spent the day learning how to program them. We saw how robots are being used today in more and more applications – from the simple – hoovering the lounge – to the complex – building houses, making deliveries and driving our cars. In the future, using and programming robotic machines is likely to form a key part of most jobs, and so embedding key programming skills now is incredibly important!
It turns out it’s really hard to program a robot. Especially when the instructions aren’t clear and the robot won’t behave. Our problem solving was turned up to the maximum as we applied the simple things we learned at the beginning of the day and built them up into something much more complicated.
We started with maths – how many rotations of the wheel are needed for a set distance? Then, we moved on to moving forwards, backwards and making a turn. Eventually, we ended up making a shape with our robots, following the full process of being given a brief, designing our algorithm and debugging the program.
We had a great day and, even though it was hard work, we all felt very proud when our hard work paid off and we were able to solve complex problems by collaborating and thinking things through carefully.
A big thanks to Fran from C-Stem and to FOLS for funding the day!