As a result of starting the Young Roboteers club, we've started to get asked lots of questions about where to begin building a robot, where do we get parts from, what do you need to know etc. Most of the questions have been coming from Home Educators who want to know more to enable their children who are interested in building robots to be able to build and code. Some of them don't know the first thing about building a robot but they are very eager to learn.
So to help beginners I've started up a group on Facebook aimed at Home Educators who want to know more about how to build basic robots, the idea behind the group is we share links, articles and answer questions about robots. Provide advice on where to find out more, kits worth sourcing etc, if you're interested in the group you can find us here Home Ed - Robot Learning Resource.
The diagram above and the following information formed part of an information sheet we handed out to our Young Roboteers on Week 2, in order to give them an idea of what is under the cover of a basic robot.
"The above schematic looks at a design for a simple Remote Controlled (R.C.) robot, this is a basic design and will only go right and left and forwards and backwards. Weapons and other items can be added but more components will be required.
The schematic shows how the power goes from the battery to the motor controller. The receiver will pick up the control information from the transmitter - for example the direction you want to drive in - and it will signal that information back to the motor controller. The motor controller will then process this information, and vary the voltage and direction going to the motors.
By varying the voltage going to the motors, you will be able to drive the robot at different speeds and turn it left and right like a tank. In this example, we are using 2 motors - 1 on each side.
More Information - You may find the YouTube video below on ‘How to Make a Simple Remote Controlled Robot Car at Home in 30 Minutes’ interesting. It should be added that the 30 minutes it states requires you to have the tools and components ready to go.
We needed to have a project for the Young Roboteers to play with that would give them the sense of being the brains behind the machine, and help them to understand that without input and instruction some machines won’t do anything. We also wanted to be able to perform a simple task, moving cotton reels from one side of a line to another, we decided that the MeArm kit would be a perfect project so we explored two different options for building a MeArm kit.
Before I go further, let’s start by explaining what the MeArm is, it’s basically a robotic arm that comes as a flat pack kit, in order to put it together you need very little more than a screwdriver, an allen key and an enormous amount of patience. When you’ve finished constructing, you wind up with a robotic arm that can be coded to perform tasks.
The official MeArm website says “It is a great kit to get you started in the world of programming, electronics, robotics and engineering! It has been described as the "Perfect Arduino Project for Beginners" by the website Lifehacker.” It’s also possible to use a Raspberry Pi, Beaglebone Black, Sparkcore and Espriuno to code the MeArm. The MeArm hardware and its
instruction code are both Open-Source, which means that the creator of the project has made it freely available to anyone and that the information may be redistributed and modified, so basically anyone can play with the code and design.
Building Your Own - Thanks to the Instructables website you can build your own MeArm from scratch if you have access to a laser cutter or know someone who can accurately cut the parts from acrylic sheet or plywood; or you can 3D print one for yourself using the MeArm 0.4 Printable (.stl) files downloadable from Thingiverse. The Instructables files for the laser cutter come as a .dxf file so it should work on most laser cutters, the parts are cut from an A4 piece of 3mm acrylic. As well as the parts you’ll need a supply of M3 screws in assorted lengths, quantity and lengths are given with the latest build instructions. You’ll also need 4 servo motors and a means of controlling your MeArm, so some form of Arduino, a battery pack, joystick and
software will also be required.
The Sintron MeArm Kit, comes from China and costs £26.95 - we got ours from Amazon –
though you can find variations of this kit from lots of different places.
The Mime Industries MeArm Kit comes from a company based in the UK in Nottingham, Mime offer two variants, a basic kit that costs £32.99 for just the MeArm parts which comprises - a set of laser cut acrylic parts, all the screws and nuts you need, and four servo motors.
Or you can buy the Deluxe Kit for £76.99 that contains the basic kit plus a Brains Board - for programming, Joystick controller and battery pack (takes 4 x AA batteries not included!).
Sintron – All the acrylic parts, fixings, 4 x TowerPro SG90 9g Micro Servos, 1 x Sintron UNO R3 Board with a USB cable, 1 x 830 Point Solderless Breadboard, 1 x Battery Box, 2 x Single Unit Joystick Modules and a set of Dupont Cables.
Mime Industries – Again all the acrylic parts, servos and fixings you need to build the MeArm plus a ‘Brains Board’ which is
Arduino compatible and has an LCD screen so you can see what you’re coding. The brains board also comes with a set of joysticks that help control your MeArm and are attached to a PCB which can then be screwed to an acrylic panel to make it look more like a controller.
Building the Kit – Both kits were fiddly to put together, it’s not something a small child could do on their own, they would need adult help and a lot of patience, getting some of the parts in to place can prove tricky but it can be done if you persevere. You need instructions, only one company of the two we tested supplies any!
Buying A Kit – If you don’t have access to laser cutters or 3D printers you can buy a kit that can be put together at home with simple tools. We looked at two different ‘Deluxe’
kits.
How Do They Compare?
It’s a real case of “you pay your money and you takes your chance”, whilst the Sintron kit is cheaper, in our opinion it most certainly isn’t the better choice kit on a number of levels.
In no particular order… The servos in the Sintron kit (clear acrylic model in photo above) have plastic gears which don’t take kindly to too much action, in fact one of our Sintron servos died within moments of powering the kit up! The Sintron servos are SG90’s with a torque of 4.8V and matching speed and have a bushing rotation which means they’re not as friction free as dual bearing gears.
The Mime servos on the other hand are much higher quality MG90’s and have a torque of between 4.8 volts (V) and 6.0V and a matching speed, the gears are metal and they have dual bearing rotation. They can achieve a greater torque at higher voltages with these servos and survived being hammered by 5 children for 45 minutes straight!
The construction of the Sintron kit is rather flimsy and not as strong as the Mime kit and on top of that the Sintron kit has absolutely NO INSTRUCTIONS to enable you to put it together! The Mime kit (blue acrylic model in the above photo) on the other hand has a Resources Page that includes a pdf building guide that you can print off. Plus the code that is on the Brains Board, cutting files for your making own MeArm should you want to just purchase the brains board and controller from them, instructions on how to hack the code of the Brains Board and running it using Scratch (Snap).
Connecting Once the Kit is Built.
The Sintron kit as mentioned above, comes with no code to run the MeArm straight from the box and finding it for the novice can be a total pain. We gave up looking eventually and put our own together, which we'll add to the resources section when we’ve tidied up the code as it did the job but wasn’t perfect. The cheaper kit is not something you could do with small children who just want to build and play!
There is also no brains board with the Sintron kit, instead you end up with a rats nest of wires (see photo above) connecting the single joy sticks to the breadboard and to the servos and UNO board, the joy sticks are loose and don’t look like a mini controller upon use. There are absolutely no wiring instructions at all. We were lucky that we had experience so knew what needed to be wired to what, for those that don’t know it would be a nightmare.
The Mime Kit on the other hand was a lot easier to sort out, the brains board and the controller plug in to each other and the code is already installed on the Brains Board so you can start to use the MeArm as soon as its finished being made.
Performance - The Sintron kit was very flimsy and also highly erratic in its movement, and within moments of powering up, the servo on the grabbing claw ceased to function, it started to get very warm after only a few movements of the claw and then just died.
The Mime kit was a lot sturdier and withstood being operated by a group of children that wanted to test the arm to its limits, the Mime kit survived! The Sintron kit was so poor that we decided to go ahead with the Mime kit.
Summing Up - In all honesty, I initially thought the Mime kit overpriced and still do a little, I wanted to be able to say that there was no difference between the two kits, so go for the cheaper option and save money. However in terms of quality and reliability the Mime Industries kit wins hands down to the cheaper Sintron kit. If you can code and understand the wiring etc. then you could save some money by buying the cheaper kit, but in terms of time, reliability and durability it’s better to buy the more expensive kit.
There are other options to explore in the form of 3D printing/laser cutting our own parts and sourcing our own components and writing our own code (that part done already), whether that is a cheaper option and just as reliable as the Mime kit is to be decided, and once we’ve tried we’ll share what we discover. In the meantime my advice is to go for a Mime Industries MeArm kit, your patience and your frustration meter will thank you for it!
After week 1 and the non-arrival of the Robot Buggy kits, I have to admit I went in to a bit of a panic, as I said last week, I've written the whole 5 week course based on what we could do with the robot buggy kit from understanding the components, to building, coding, controlling and ultimately competing in a Robot Games event in week 5. I'm still hopeful we can do that, although I'm becoming more doubtful that it will be based on the Kitronik buggy.
On Sunday morning I went in to planning and adapting mode, and by the end of the day after consulting with Simon, I could present Graeme - our co-conspirator on the project - with a back up plan. I admit that I was feeling bad because I'd seen the faces of the kids when we explained on week 1 what we had in store, and I knew I'd have to tell them it may not happen now. :(
The new plan was to get the Silk Mill to get us 2 MeArm kits which they thankfully did, so the kids could be split in to two groups and would still have something to build, code and control, and work as a team on. The build starts next week, this week they got to drive our practice robot and each young roboteer got the chance to bring the robot to a standstill in a u shaped enclosure, the rule was you couldn't touch the sides and had to get as close as you could to the back.
I know I shouldn't be biased, but I have to admit at being both delighted and proud that of all nine roboteers, the two girls did the best, the winner - who got just 2mm away from the back of the U - was the same girl who impressed me with her ingenuity last week. One of the girls did ask why there were only 2 girls on the course, I told her that they were the only ones that applied, she said bless her, "they are probably scared that they will show the boys up", my answer "why be scared of that"? I did go on to point out that in this group you're not a girl, you're a roboteer, both girls went off with a smile, neither of them are afraid and are happy to have a go, which is super, some of the boys are not so eager to have a go though, which amazed me.
I did witness sulky boys when the girls did better, and some boys raised objections that the girls were not doing it right, they were! Plus not all the boys stayed on point, the goal was to drive round, avoid the obstacles and reverse into the U without colliding with anything, which translated to 2 boys in particular as drive round like lunatics, smash into everything and destroy the obstacle, doh!
Moving on, after the driving practice I started the history part of the session, first asking the kids to tell me what they had found out about the Father of Computing and Mother of Computing, it alarmed me that a couple of the boys hadn't bothered to find out who Ada Lovelace was, mentioning only Charles Babbage, I had added a bit about both to the presentation so first talked about that and handed out an info sheet on Ada Lovelace which explained a little of what she did.
As last week was the first time I'd 'taught' kids, I had some things to learn, one of them was to make the history lesson more 21st century! Last week's history session was me talking to the kids and referring to some small pictures on a piece of paper. I watched their reaction, even I thought it was flat and boring, not the content, just the delivery.
That had to change, I was hindered slightly by the fact that one of the kids last week had a cold and passed it on to me, so I was a tad poorly for a few days, it got round to Thursday and I hadn't written the history part, so I settled down to get on with it. In planning the course I'd decided that from a historical perspective we'd look at the following subjects: - Automatons, Mechanical Machines, Rise of the Robots, Technology & Toys and The Future of Robots.
I also wanted to start way back in history, which we did with the first 'moving' toys that Egyptian children would have played with in 2,000 B.C.. Introducing the concept of movement, and crude robot forms, and to show how robots have developed and evolved, working through to the current day and getting the kids to imagine what the future will hold robotically in our final session.
As the week 1 history session went well, being flat aside, I decided to make it more relevant to how kids seemingly learn today and put together a PowerPoint presentation. Bigger images, and most importantly some video clips, to bring the history alive, plus they contained lots of information that came from the time period referred to, and meant I wasn't talking 'AT' them all the time. The clip above looked at Eric the Robot, I instructed the kids to pay particular attention to what the women said when she introduced Eric at the beginning of this video, and then pointed out that after all she said, it was the man that 'controlled' the robot! Incidentally it was most gratifying when one of the boys made reference to the modern day robot Eric meme.
I'd decided that in charting the history of robots we couldn't ignore computers, as part of my session I told the kids "When you’re thinking about the development and evolution of robots, it’s impossible to not include computers as part of that history." adding that "Many of today’s advanced robots contain computerised components and are controlled by programs which are input from computers. For instance the BBC Microbit we used last week to pass instructions to the Robot Buggy to follow the line is a perfect example of a computer program controlling a robot."
The kids got it and were fascinated by the presentation which started with Babbage and Lovelace and their work with the difference engine and moved through Jacquard and his work with the Punched Card System in 1801, Zadock Dederick's Steam Man, Robot Eric, Alan Turing's Machine and Bombes and how they eventually helped us win WWII and ended in 1939 with Elektro the 'Smoking Robot' no relation to Chompalot lol!
Standing at over 7ft tall and weighing 265lbs Elektro was an exhibit at the New York Worlds Fair in 1939 and was dubbed as one of the first humanoid robots in appearance. He was very similar to Eric in design and construction, but Elektro could walk by voice command, speak about 700 words (using words recorded on a disc played on a 78-rpm record player - it was fun explaining those to the kids!), he smoked cigarettes (which I described to the kids as being one of the most pointless things to teach a robot ever!) It could blow up balloons, and move his head and arms. Elektro's body consisted of a steel gear, cam and motor skeleton covered by an aluminium skin. His photo-electric "eyes" could distinguish red and green light. After his successful 1939 appearance Elektro reappeared at that fair in 1940, with Sparko, a robot dog that could bark, sit, and beg.
I was amazed at the different reaction adding in some colour, bigger images and videos had. The session also sparked more questions and ideas from the kids in-between slides, which was pretty gratifying :) After the history session, Simon talked the kids through the components in the practice robot, the kids got a sheet to take home with a diagram on of the inside of the practice bot, with additional information and some links to find out more about building a basic robot.
We introduced servo control which will be used in the Andrea Android project we're putting together with the kids for Maker Faire, and showed the signals generated by motors and servos on a digital oscilloscope. We chatted about the kinds of things that computers can control, a task that required that the kids had done the second part of their preparation for week 2, which they had hurrah, and finished off looking at the MeArm we'll be putting together next week. We also looked at what the kids will be doing next week, tasks include using a laser cutter and looking at a 3D printer as well as more robot history.
I have to say that putting this course together has been totally rewarding, seeing the excitement in the kids faces and watching them discover something new is pretty amazing, I was blown away at the end of the session this week though, when one of the kids made a point of thanking me for teaching him useful and interesting stuff, pointing out that lessons at places like this are usually boring, but ours was fun and interesting. During the session he was full of questions and suggestions and it was obvious he was getting a lot from the session, his words spoken like a man not a boy and his reaction throughout the whole session made all the work to get something put together so totally worth it :) I just have to do it again now for week 3!
Incidentally coming back to what the girls said earlier asking why more girls hadn't taken part, we're baffled, we have a couple of places that despite being booked the kids didn't show up on week 1 or 2, so if you're a girl and live in Derby and can get to the Silk Mill for 1:30 on Saturday 1st October 2016, then get in touch with me @GroovySci on Twitter or contact the Silk Mill, come and show the boys how its done because #girlscanrobot.
Week 1 was both rewarding and stressful, the stress was not down to the kids though, they were amazing. I'd been really nervous about working with children, you know the old adage, well so far, luckily for me I've found its not true. It really was worth all the weeks of preparation to get something together that would interest the kids.
The Young Roboteers this week consisted of 6 boys and 2 girls, not sure where the other 4 kids were, they were no shows, could be they were ill or otherwise disposed and will join us next week, but we're taking names for the places in the event that they have decided against attending. So if you live in or near Derby and could get to the Silk Mill every Saturday for the next 5 weeks, you're 11-14 and want to learn about robots and being a roboteer then get in touch with me and I'll add you to the standby list!
As part of the course we want to instil in the kids what its like working with other roboteers in the Roboteer community, and encourage them to work together as well as being in teams, but week 1 was all about getting to know each other, learning names, setting ground rules and having fun.
We started off looking at some clips from Robot Wars and talked about our experiences as roboteers, they got to meet Chompalot and ask questions, all of them were amazed at just how big he was.
Then we moved on to some history, having first asked what they thought a robot to be, the answers were interesting, lots of variations of what a robot is actually defined as, and no references to combat robots. From the opening discussion we moved on to start looking at the history of robot development and I took them as far back as 2,000 B.C. and looked at development of moving toys and moved on to automatons ending for this session in 1790.
Next we gave them a practical task to do, each child got to put together an electronic badge donated by Derby Makers, The badge is a simple circuit that connects a multi-colour LED to a battery, and the LED cycles through its colours continuously as long as the battery is connected. One of our adult helpers suggested using a small blob of blu-tak underneath the clasp to help secure the pin clasp for the badge in place, even then the kids struggled.
One of the girls though got my ingenuity award for the week, she rolled her piece of blutak into a sausage and used it to fix the clasp in place over the top, attaching each end of the 'sausage' to the circuit board. Her solution was copied by some of the boys who were struggling when I pointed it out. This is a perfect example as to why I think having female roboteers on a team is such a brilliant idea, we approach problems in a different way and find solutions that the guys don't consider, its ying and yang and I know Simon would agree, its what happens on our team. The task introduced them to soldering, a few had done it before, those that hadn't took to it like ducks to water :)
At this point, I can explain why week 1 of the course was stressy, but I must add it was before the event and NOTHING to do with our Young Roboteers, nope it was technology and supply and demand. We bought a Robot Buggy from Kitronik because we were looking for a small project that could be easily put together by children, and could be programmed to do simple tasks like line following, the Kitronik kit was perfect, and as a bonus you got to show the kids how to use a laser cutter which they have in the workshop at the Silk Mill to make the top panel, and a 3D printer which is used to make the additional pieces that get put on to customise your robot. Plus you can blue tooth it to remotely control it from an app, which was the final stage for the final week.
The kit was so perfect that I wrote the 5 week course almost entirely around activities we could do using the robot buggy, from building to coding and finally in week 5 having a set of Robot Games, where the kids get to put all they've learnt in to practice. Brilliant, yes? Not if the company selling the robot hasn't got 4 kits in stock that you need to get your Young Roboteers started! :(
So when it became apparent that the kits would be a no show, on Friday evening after some brain storming with our friend Graeme at the Silk Mill, we decided we'd use our ready made buggy and introduce the kit to the kids and explained what we hoped to do with it, and then introduced the BBC Microbit to them which they'd need to use to code the buggy to do its tasks. Some of them had not used a Microbit before, we got a volunteer from one of the kids that had and he put the code on to the Microbit, then we got the buggy to follow a wiggly line down the centre of the table. It worked like a charm!
Next we introduced the kids to the group project we'd be doing together to present at Maker Faire, although I need to add the whole project won't be done by the current group of Young Roboteers, they will be getting the project off the ground. Then subsequent groups will build on the project until 'Andrea Android' becomes autonomous and can help give tours around the Silk Mill.
Stage 1 - The group will help create a 'shoulder and chest' mount for the head using the laser cutter. During the 5 week club the project will be worked on adding servo’s, wiring etc so that the mouth, eyes and head will move.
Many of the parts including the head are 3D printed so we'll explain that and the build process and components used and what they do. The head which can be seen in the first photo will be attached to the chest and using Arduino we'll code the servos to move the eyes, mouth etc. Other groups will work on arms and the base and of course making Andrea Android look the part.
The final part of the afternoon, the Young Roboteers got the chance to drive the 3D printed baby Chompalot, which Simon put together originally just for fun, they were fascinated, one of the kids said that it was a lot harder to control than it looks and "they make it look so easy on the TV", point well observed that child! At the end of the session, each child was given a "Taking it Further" sheet which gives them the 5 suggestions for opportunities to learn more like watching YouTube videos, looking at links with more information on automaton's, watch a movie and finally do a little research/preparation for week 2. A couple of the kids didn't take their sheets home with them :oO Most did though!
I received some amazing feedback yesterday from a parent of one of the kids attending "Thank you for Saturday. My son really enjoyed it and has done his homework without being asked too. Have you considered a career in education?" to me that made it all worthwhile, all the preparation, all the stress was so totally worth it, if just one kid gets inspired, what more can we ask. I loved it and I'm looking forward to meeting them all again next week to help them learn more.
We're helping to run a 5 week club beginning on the 17th September at Derby Silk Mill, where 12 children aged 11-14 will be joining us to learn interesting facts about the history of robots and discover how to build a robot, code it and control it. The Young Roboteers will learn some basic electronics, and coding and get to take part in some robot games.
We'll be sharing stories of our experiences in the Robot Wars arena and working as a team to create a robotic project for Derby Maker Faire which occurs on the 22nd October 2016. If the maiden club is successful, more projects will occur in the future, so watch this space.
