How Does a Color Sensor Work?
Engineers have used their understanding of how the human eye works to design electronic color sensors.Copyright (left, bottom) 2004 Microsoft Corporation, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052-6399 USA. All rights reserved; (right) National Eye Institute
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Students learn more about how color sensors work, reinforcing their similarities to the human sense of sight. They look at the light sensing process—incoming light converted to electrical signals sent to the brain—through the human eye anatomy as well as human-made electrical color sensors. A mini-activity, which uses LEGO® MINDSTORMS® EV3 intelligent bricks and color sensors gives students a chance to investigate how color sensors function in preparation for the associated activity involving the color sensors and taskbots. A PowerPoint® presentation explains stimulus-to-response pathways, sensor fundamentals, and details about the LEGO color sensor, including its two modes of gathering data and what its numerical value readings mean. Students take pre/post quizzes and watch a short online video. This lesson and its associated activity enable students to gain a deeper understanding of how robots can take sensor input and use it to make decisions via programming.
Biological engineers and neuroscientists perceive the human body as a functioning, controlled system, similar to a robot. More and more findings show that mathematical principles similar to those used in robotics are extremely useful or even necessary for a complete understanding of the human body. Through comparison of their similarities, students strengthen their understanding of the functioning of both human and robotic sensors. Color sensors are being used in all sorts of devices. For instance, when you scan your credit card to buy groceries, a color sensor reads the credit card numbers. Cameras continuously monitor activity in stores and banks. The cameras on cell phones are color sensors, too.
After this lesson, students should be able to:
- Describe how color sensors work.
- Compare electrical color sensors to human eyes.
- Program the LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 robot with the color sensor.
- Provide a basic explanation of how sensors are integrated into robots via careful programming.