Movement Task Using Sensors - Humans and Robots

Biological engineers and neuroscientists perceive the human body as a functioning, controlled system, similar to a robot. Through this activity, students relate the similarities and differences between human senses and robot sensors. They see how a program is similar to the messages sent to human brains.

After this activity, students should be able to:

• Compare the functions of the components involved in movement in both a human body and a robot.
• Program an NXT robot to move, based on the input it received from a sensor.

This activity is part of the How Do Human Sensors Work? lesson. In the activity, students learn to think like robots in order to learn how to program them with the sensor. Follow the Movement Task Involving Sensors (PPT) PowerPoint Presentation to take the students through the procedure.

Before the Activity

• Follow the instructions provided in the Activity 1: Understanding Communication with a Robot to put together and program the NXT taskbot using the link https://www.teachengineering.org/collection/umo_/activities/umo_robots_act/how_to_build_a_lego_taskbot.pdf. Expect this to take about 45 minutes.
• Read the programming instructions in the How to Use Sensors in NXT Programming (PPTX) PowerPoint file. Also, this activity should follow previous lessons and activities in the unit that cover many of the basics related to both the robot and its programming.

With the Students

Refer to the Movement Task Using Sensors (PPT) PowerPoint Presentation.

1. Use slides 2-4 as an overview of the previous class about human senses and robotic sensors. As necessary, review Activity 1: Understanding Communication with a Robot in which students learned what a robot is.
2. Revisit Part I of the first activity in this unit, Understanding Communicaiton with a Robot, which is reproduced on slides 5 and 6. Either do the activity or ask students to recall their experiences doing it previously it in approaching the questions on slide 7, which are designed to help students understand how program commands help in easy control of the robot and also how human sensors enable easy movement.
3. The first part of this activity illustrates how robot sensors help in efficient movement of the robot. Next, revisit Part II of the first activity in the unit, Understanding Communication with a Robot, in which students programmed a taskbot to navigate a maze.
4. Create a maze with textbooks, wooden boards or boxes. Increase the maze difficulty by adding more turns.
5. Divide the class into groups of two or three students each. Distribute the built LEGO NXT taskbots to the groups, one per group. If available, they can start with the same taskbot they used in Activity 1: Understanding Communication with a Robot.
6. Provide students with the instructions for attaching (PDF) and programming (PDF) taskbots with sensors, provided as attachments to this activity.
7. Present the engineering design challenges on slide 8. Once groups have a taskbot that can navigate the maze without a sensor, completing design challenge B, each group should select a robot sensor of their choice to use to program their respective NXT robot to move through the maze. This is engineering design challenge B.
8. After they have finished, ask each group to answer the discussion questions on slide 9 for the class.
9. Conclude the unit by conducting the Jeopardy Game as described in the Assessment section and on slides 11-13.

Jeopardy Rules

• Team 1 chooses and answers the first question.
• If Team 1 is unable to answer the question, then Team 2 gets to choose.
• The question keeps cycling through all of the teams (repeating if necessary) until either one team gets it right, or the teacher determines that the question will likely not be answered and reveals the answer to the class.
• The team that correctly answers the question is given the points for that question.
• Once the answer of the question is known, Team 1's turn is over. The next question is chosen by Team 2, which gets the first opportunity to answer the question. This process continues until all questions are completed.

Final Jeopardy Rules

• Each team is given a writing utensil and a piece of paper.
• Each team is given a limited period of time to write down their answer to the final Jeopardy question.
• Along with their answers, the teams must also write down the number of points they are willing to "wager" on their answers. The maximum number of points that a team can wager is the number of points that they currently have. If a team's answer is correct, it gains the number of points that it wagered. If a team's answer is incorrect, it loses the number of points that it wagered.
• Then teams submit their answers for grading by the teacher.

Using the Jeopardy File

• Open the Post-Activity Assessment Jeopardy Game (PPT) PowerPoint and choose the slide show view.
• Click on the particular point value in the particular column chosen by a team and read off the "answer" (in Jeopardy, teams are given the "answer" to a question and must come up with the "question").
• To view the "question," click on the "question" button.
• To go back to the main screen, click on the icon in the bottom right corner of the screen.
• DO NOT SAVE a Jeopardy file after playing a game! ALWAYS KEEP A COPY of the ORIGINAL FILE!

Make sure that robots are only run on tables to ensure that no damage occurs to them.