Remote Control Using Bluetooth
Students use Bluetooth wireless to guide LEGO robotsCopyright (top left) 2011 Jnmasek, Wikimedia Commons; (bottom left) 2009 Google via Wikimedia Commons; (right) 2004 Microsoft Corporation, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052-6399 USA. All rights reserved. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bluetooth.svg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Android_robot.svg http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/images/results.aspx?qu=remote&ex=1#ai:MP900430788|mt:2|
Building on what they learned about wired and wireless electrical connections in the associated lesson, students use Android phones to take advantage of Bluetooth wireless connections to remotely guide LEGO® MINDSTORMS® EV3 robots through a maze. They compare this wireless remote control navigation to their previous experiences navigating LEGO robots via programming. A PowerPoint® presentation and pre/post quizzes are provided.
Many computer scientists, as well as other engineers and researchers, must be able to understand electrical connections in order to design programs that allow these devices to exchange and interpret information. We rely on these wire and wireless connections every day. For instance, when navigating a browser to a website, the browser must be able to successfully send HTML requests to the website's server. The server must receive and then correctly interpret the request and respond with the relevant files so that the browser can load the website. More and more we depend on multiple electrical devices being able to find and connect with each other wirelessly. Bluetooth is a popular type of wireless electrical connection used by many devices, such as the WiiMote and the Wii.
After this activity, students should be able to:
- Explain what a wireless connection is.
- Explain how a LEGO robot can use a Bluetooth connection to communicate with other devices.
- Guide a LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 robot through a maze using a Bluetooth device.