R13-U4 · usually age 13 · Robotics Engineers
Rescue Rover Mission
Can the rover navigate a changing course?
Pilot course · not yet classroom-validated
Build: Obstacle-avoiding rescue rover
- Sense
- Decide
- Act
- Power and safety
- Test and debug
Who it is for
Age is a starting point, never a limit. A learner who can show what this unit starts from can begin here at any age.
- How they learn
- By reading and changing real Arduino sketches, predicting, testing in a model, then building and testing the real circuit.
- The adult's role
- An adult checks every circuit and anything that moves before it is powered.
- Session
- 75–90 minutes
- Hardware
- Arduino Uno R3 or compatible (5 V). The adult checks the power circuit and the motor driver. Motors never run from a pin; share GND between supplies.
Starts from
States
Describe and program behaviour as states, with a state diagram.
Built in R13-U3 Autonomous Behaviour
Motor drivers
Use a motor driver with its own supply, and a stop switch that cuts motor power.
Built in R11-U1 Build the Rover
Finding faults
Find a fault by checking one thing at a time.
Built in R08-U3 Robots That Respond
Builds, and what it is the input for
Failure analysis
Analyse failures and justify a change with test data.
Input for R14-U1 Distance, Speed and Odometry, R16-U1 Images as Sensor Data, R17-U3 Safe Autonomy
Simulation limits
Say what a simulation leaves out compared with the real robot.
Input for R17-U2 Build and Simulate
In the studio today
After R13-U1 to U3, start the Arduino Rescue Rover course at session 10; sessions 5–9 become a quick review.
Outline (taught by the pilot course above)
The course above holds this unit's sessions. Below is the unit's outline.
- Ideas
- integration · reliability · test plan
- Evidence of learning
- Show five trials, revisions and a failure analysis.