The World is a Toy Box
Introduction: This presentation introduces students to engineering and robotics. It is
composed of two parts: Fist class a power point presentation about engineering and
robotics, and the second class (usually requires 90 minutes) construct Lego Minstorm
robots and experiment with the different sensors.
Grades Levels: 6-9
Overall Objectives: Introduce the students to engineering and robotics.
Estimated Time: One 50 minute class period for the power point presentation. One 90
minute class period to construct the robots.
Materials and Preparation: One Education Mindstorm NXT Robot kit for every three
students http://www.legoeducation.com/store/detail.aspx?ID=1263. Programs and Power
Point presentation created for this module found on Science Posse Web page. Flashlights.
Class Period 1: Power Point Outline
The World is a Toy Box
 By Tim Brothers
What is an Engineer?
 Ask the students what they think an engineer and see the responses.
Engineers
 Many people do not understand what an engineer is, so here are two
definitions. The first is the text book definition. Then the second definition is
an example of how engineers look at the world
 Ask the students if they know of any sub optimized or poorly featured
devices?
 One example is the floor vacuuming robot. Many parents have
these now, and the students know that they don’t really do a
good job. Ask them how to make it better.
The next 4 slides are examples of what different engineers design.
 Civil Engineering
o Ask the students what the picture is of. Answer Golden Gate Bridge.
o Civil engineers design Bridges, Dams, Roads, and public works
projects of this sort.
 Architectural Engineer
o Ask the students what the picture is of. Answer Empire State Building.
o Architectural engineers design building, and have to take into
consideration things like wind effect, natural disasters (What will
earthquakes do to buildings? Some sky scrapers are built with springs
under the foundation.), snow load, etc.
 Textile Engineering
o Ask the students what the pictures have in common, and what they are
pictures of.
 Right: Gortex Jacket. Top Middle: Kevlar Helmet. Right:
Synthetic rubber gym floor.
 What they have in common: They are all man made synthetic
materials.
o Textile engineers design anything with synthetic or natural materials.
 What type of engineering would build these guys?
o Electrical, Mechanical, Robotic, Textile…
 Other disciples that are involved include technicians,
machinists, manufacturers, computer scientists…
o Talk of how engineering in a multidisciplinary field where an
individual can experience many different projects/opportunities.
What is a robot?
o Ask students if they have any robots at home according to this definition.
Another Robot
o Ask students again if they have any robots at home according to this definition.
The next 6 slides show different kinds of robots
o Robot Arm Manipulators
o Ask Students where picture was taken. Answer: The international space
station. The robotic arm was build by Canada for the international space
station, and it is a serial robot with a tool at the end (know and an end
effector)
o These robots are used a lot in manufacturing and assembly. Very simple
robots to build.
o Stewart Platforms
o Multiple legs that expand to different lengths to move a table on top of the
legs. They are used for exact pointing and material adjustment. The one
shown in the picture is being developed by the University of Wyoming for
laser communication satellites. The idea is that currently the
communication is accomplished with radio waves, but these waves spread
out as they travel. This is why an antenna or satellite dish is required to put
the signal back together. But a laser does not fan out, so if a laser could be
pointed exactly at a laser sensor then communications could be
accomplished over a much larger area. But a very exact robot would be
required to point the laser, and so the “hexapod” is being developed.
o Swarms
o Swarms are collections of small robots that combine their efforts to
perform some large task. The robots that are pictured here are being
developed by the University of Wyoming for the department of defense
(DOD). The DOD desires a swarm of robots that will be able to do
autonomous surveillance. So this swarm is programmed to form a specific
pattern, and then move in the pattern to a specific target. This is done
without global information and totally automatically. If the picture is
closely examined it can be seen that the robots are built out of Lego’s
blocks. Lego’s are ideally suited for prototyping robots. Ask students why.
Answer: the robots can quickly be assembled and then quickly
reconstructed to solve problems. Swarms often times work off of a
principal called emergent behavior. Emergent behavior is the complex
behavior that emerges as a group of robots are programmed with a simple
task. Ask the students if they can think of an example of this. Answer Ant.
o Swarms (slide 2)
o Many robot behaviors try to replicate animalistic behavior. Ants are a
prefect example, take for instance gathering food. How do ants know to
walk in a line? The “programming” of an ant is very simple, they are
“programmed” to find food, and when they do return to the ant hill and
leave a pheromone trail that indicates they have found food. When an ant
finds a pheromone trail indicating food it is “programmed” to follow the
trail to food. Once the ant find food it again lays down a pheromone trail
indicating it found food. Through this method the more ants that find the
pheromone trail the stronger the trail becomes. So even though the ants
were not “programmed” to walk in a line with food this behavior emerges
from two simple rules: When you find food return to the ant hill and leave
a pheromone trail indicating food. When you find a pheromone trail
indicating food follow it to the food.
o Humanoid Robots
o Picture of Sony’s QRIO a humanoid companion robot.
o Capable of voice and face recognition (making it able to look at a person
and know who it is and talk to that person)
o Guinness World Record holder for the first bipedal robot capable of
running (defined as moving while both legs are off the ground at the same
time).
o Why would they spend so much money on a humanoid robot?
 They were hoping to be able to sell these robots as companion
robots that would be able to assist the elderly with daily tasks.
However, due to corporate cuts, the project has been canceled.
o Lego Mindstorm Robots
o The Lego Minstorm robots are a set of Lego’s that utilize a central
processing brick to connect to multiple sensors.
 The ultrasonic sensor utilizes ultrasonic waves in order to find the
distance to an object. This system is much like how a bat can
“see.”
 Light sensor utilizes a Light Emitting Diode (LED) and a light
receiver. The LED emits a light that the light senor receives and
measures the amount of light reflected. So which will reflect more
light, a white sheet of paper or a black sheet of paper?
 Sound sensor that is just a basic microphone.
 Bump senor that is just a contact button.
Programming
o Abstract State Machine (ASM) is used to get a graphical plan for creating a
program. The ASM is composed of two different blocks, a state block and a
decision block, and transition lines. The decision block contains some
question, and depending on the outcome of the question a transition is made to
one of two different state.
Class Period 2: Build Robots
Before the class charge each one of the Lego Bricks and install the three programs on each brick.
The follow the walls program utilizes two ultrasonic sensors, a forward looking sensor connected
to port 4, and one pointing to the left connected to port 1.
This class is mostly spent in independent learning and experimentation. Little guidance is given,
but it is explained that in science the majority of investigation is done through curiosity. So
instruct them to build the robot, by following the directions in the kit. They do not need to put on
all of the sensors, jut whatever sensors they want to experiment with.
When they have completed building ask the first question (found below) and then let them go.
When they seem to be slowing down ask another question.
Questions:
 “What can you get this robot to do?”
 “Can you get it to follow a light?” (Give the group a flashlight)
 “Can you get it to follow another robot?”
 “Experiment with the find the walls program, it does not work well with this robot
configuration, and can you make it work better?”