Elementary bots, Tas-Silg, and Bocci Boulders

Last night our third professor (Chris Clark) landed, and he and I prepared for our presentations at St. Edward's College (a primary and secondary private school). This morning, a bunch of us went out running, and came back just in time to leave for the school. When we arrived, we set up all of the binary encoder robots that we presented at Pacheco during winter quarter at Cal Poly, and watched in awe as WAY more kids filed in than we had previously expected. We still managed pretty well. Our audience consisted of ~65 3rd and 4th graders.




Chris started off by giving a talk on how robots work, why they are important, and how they can be used to beneficially. I got up and gave a short explanation on how to program the bots that the kids would be fiddling around with, and then we split up into groups. We all had a great time, and the kids were ecstatic to get to work with robots. We packed up and took off from St. Edwards at about 10:30, and headed straight for our site: Tas-Silg.

Tas-Silg is an ancient temple site located on the south-western side of the island by the coast. We set up the control boxes and robot, and deployed into our first cistern. This was BY FAR the coolest cistern that we have done on this trip so far. There were a bunch of twisty, rubble filled passages, and the water was crystal clear (although I still would not drink from it).


After 15 minutes of driving in the cistern, Timmy (our awesome host) showed up to give us a tour of the grounds. David Cardona, a graduate student at University of Malta also showed up to check in with us. A little later, Prof. Simon Fabri, a professor at University of Malta, showed up with two of his students who were doing similar robotics work. Brent and I gave them a tour of our equipment and setup, and then asked them a couple of questions on our research topics for our global engineering class. Once that was done, Tim and I set up the go-pros on the ROV, and deployed to get some textures from the first cistern. We hoisted the ROV up and deployed into the second cistern (located 20m away from the first). We finished up at about 3:00, and called the bus driver.



It turns out that the bus driver wasn't going to be able to get there until 4:15, and Zoe had to give a talk at the university at 4:00. Timmy & Simon took Zoe, Jane, Chris, Brent, and Jeff in their cars. The rest of us stayed with the equipment on site until the bus driver showed up. Since we had an hour to kill, we decided to play an awesome game that we call bocci boulders (similar to bocci ball.... but... with boulders). Tim was surprisingly good, and won nearly every round except for the rounds where a car ran over his boulder and smashed it into pieces.


The driver finally showed up and we hopped in. The drive home was relaxing, and I spent a lot of time thinking about how much I am going to miss this trip. It has been such a great experience, and it's really too bad that it's already halfway over! We got home, unloaded, and did some coding for our software projects. I got the mosaic for the day wrapped up and will start working on the second cistern shortly. It's been a great day, and the next week is looking similarly awesome!

Robots at Pacheco!

This last Wednesday we had the opportunity to visit the kids at Pacheco elementary once again. We came armed with a bucket of neat solar robot kits that teams of students would get the opportunity to play with. Kids could chose from a number of models, such as a race car, windmill, airboat, or walking dog.

We started out by reviewing the basics from last week and then went over the different sources of power for an electric motor. We gave a quick explanation of how electric motors work, then set the kids loose to build their robots.

My group built the airboat and had a ton of fun using the lamps we brought to drive it around the sink. A few other groups built the walking dog, race car, and boat as well. The kids were having a blast watching their robots cruise around the room!

After everyone had successfully built a working model, we had the kids tear everything down and then build a race car for each group. Once everyone had finished, we took all of the cars outside in the sun and raced them down the sidewalk. The kids absolutely loved this part, and I had a pretty good time myself. It was really funny to watch them all running down the road screaming at their cars to go faster.

Afterwards, we packed everything up and headed out, another successful lesson completed! This coming week we'll be doing the same lesson with a different group of kids. Looking forward to it!

Pacheco Elementary Labs and 3D Visualization Update

Hi everyone,

Today was our second of 6 robotics demos for the kids at Pacheco, and things went great! We have done lab #1 both weeks for different classes so far, and the kids love it. The lesson goes something like this:

We show up, the kids come in from recess, and Mrs. Banfield introduces us to them and tells them that we are there to talk about robotics, at which point every kid in the class gasps "OHHHHHHH ROBOTS!!!".

From there I start off with a powerpoint that shows Wall-E bumbling around on the screen collecting balls, and we split up into groups to talk with students about what the know and what they would like to learn about robots. I walk back to the front to ask them questions about better known robots like Roombas, and then Billy gets up to talk about one of the robots that was sitting around in the LAIR. After Billy talks about the brains, arms, and eyes of that robot, we split up into groups again to let the kids design a robot of their own on paper.

After that the fun begins. Tyler and Sara have a competition to see who can build a Lego robot the fastest, and then we ask the kids what they think these robots do. We tell them that the robots brains were programmed to follow lines, so when you lay white masking tape on the black carpet, the robots know how to stay on track. We then demonstrate by allowing each kid to lay down a piece of tape so that a track is made. We put the lego robots on the track and the kids watch as the robots follow the lines (and sometimes collide with each other). After that, we get back into groups to talk about what they learned today, and then I head back up to the front to introduce the solar robots that we will be playing with next time we meet them.

The kids are so enthusiastic about the lesson, and Mrs. Banfield is right there with them. Hopefully we can keep up the great work at Pacheco elementary in the next 4 weeks!




On the 3D visualization front: Jane, Sara, Brent, and I skyped with John "Pathfinder" Lester, who works at ReactionGrid developing 3D environments with which people can model things. He told us about some software (Unity3D and Jibe) with which we can carry out our project for our archaeologist friends. Unity3D is a video game development software that seems to be just what we need. I plan on getting some bigger projects up and running so that in the end, we can have a map of malta with specific sites that can be zoomed into. On clicking a site, a 3D textured version of it will pop up (hopefully with a 3D model of the cistern in it) that will have triggers that bring up descriptions of the area. More from me later!