Their first robot

The first phase of the course consists of students building and programming a pre-designed robot. The robot they are building searches for its box. Here are some photos of the robot they are making!

Here is a video of the robot in action!

Note that the robot drives forward until either of its two touch sensors are pushed in, indicating that it has run into an object. Then, it maneuvers until both touch sensors are pushed in, indicating that it is aligned with the object. Next, it stops and checks the color of the object using its color sensor. If the color of the object matches its box color (in this case black), it stops and beeps. Otherwise, it backs up and continues its search.

Note that while driving forward the robot occasionally stops and scans around with the ultrasonic rangefinder. If it finds an object nearby, it will head in the direction of that object.

The robot is programmed on the computer in the Bricx Command Center IDE. The language used is NXC.