Friday, December 22, 2006
The Fourth Grade Robotics Team
Follow me down the steps into the science classroom at South Bend’s Kennedy Academy. A team of fourth graders unpack a couple of bright yellow boxes. They sort hundreds of Lego pieces, all the garden variety bumpy brick-shaped Legos, of course, but much more. There are gears and wheels and gizmos, tank treads, rubber tires, and a good number of other objects only Doctor Seuss himself could name, many of them cooler than anything baby-boomers like me found in a toybox in all of childhood. There are a handful of tiny motors, and a small brick-shaped computer body with Lego bumps all over it. And software, and a little tower that programs the device via radio waves. We have the makings of a robot.
First the kids had to build the eight missions, the intricate objects and mechanisms that serve as the robot’s task. This took a few happy afternoons, following step by step instructions, until these eight Lego masterpieces were ready. The missions were mounted on a 4 by 8 playing board with black guard rails around the edges to keep an errant robot from crashing to the floor. Now we were ready to do some series engineering.
By we, of course, I mean the kids. The adults were not supposed to do the work. I wanted to play with the robots. But the kids never let the things alone.
Now, about the robots themselves. The instructions suggested ways to set the computer body on tank-like platforms and use the motors to drive wheels or tracks,. There was a whole catalog of pulleys and bumpers and shovels that you could build, but none of these things actually answered the question: how to construct and program the robot to carry out a particular task at each of the eight missions, in under two minutes. For example, on one mission, the robot had to travel the length of the board, narrowly missing two or three of the other missions, stop within reach of a lever, and turn the lever to the side. If the lever turned, the mission would tumble through its motions and full points would be awarded. If the robot stopped an inch too far away and missed the lever, no points. And then the robot had to turn and head off to solve a different mission – to drop a device onto a spring-loaded gadget, say, setting off the gears, to win the points. On another, the robot had to push a truck onto a ramp, then release a switch that would raise the ramp into the air. All via a program written ahead of time, all in under two minutes.
The kids built two different robots, one with wheels, one with tracks, and they discovered how challenging the missions actually were. They adjusted the gears so the robot would make smaller, finer movements. They were undaunted – every Monday and Friday after school, they built and rebuilt the robots, programmed and reprogrammed them, tested and retested them. If the robot came near its goal, suspense built up. And when after several days of trial and error one of the robots actually accomplished a mission, there were cheers all around. And so it went through November, when we watched the older, more experienced teams at the regional competition. There, with booming music and cheering crowds, the robots constructed by 7th and 8th graders charged across the boards, throwing levers and dropping balls and hoisting trucks into the air like these were the most natural acts in the world. Why, any robot could do it.
On the last days of programming, our kids abandoned the eight missions One group taught their robot to play a pop tune while turning slowly on its tank treads. The other group made its robot dance. We spent our last meeting eating pizza together and watching a video I’d made of their work. When the final credits rolled, loud dance music kicked in, and the two robots spun and zig-zagged across the table. The young people and the adult volunteers applauded and started talking about doing Lego robotics again next year.
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About the series
Michiana Chronicles is a series of radio essays by Jonathan Nashel, Louise Collins, Joe Chaney, Jeanette Saddler Taylor, Jeff Nixa, April Lidinsky, and Ken Smith.
Michiana is the region of north-central Indiana and southern Michigan roughly centered on South Bend, Indiana.
Michiana Chronicles airs on Fridays at 7:35 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. on WVPE (88.1 FM), the home of public radio in Elkhart / South Bend, Indiana.
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