Actual robots!
In 2014, I ran a Kickstarter campaign called One Robot Per Child designed to raise money for an entire class of students at Rauner College Prep to learn about technology and to each create a copy of the special robot I designed.
Here’s a TV interview I did during the campaign:
If you’d like create your own robot like mine, here are a few links:
- The 3D printed parts are available here on Thingiverse (you can use the site to order prints to have shipped to you if you don’t have a 3D printer)
- Here is the guide to creating a kit by collecting the electronic and other physical components and preparing them for assembly
- Here are the “user” steps for taking the kit and turning it into a robot:
- Intro to the kit and assembling the gearmotors
- Here are the steps for connecting the electrical and 3D printed parts
- Here are the initial steps for wiring and programming the microprocessor, an Arduino Nano to the other electronics; if you aren’t very familiar with Arduinos, this document provides an overview
- Here are the final construction steps
- Finally, here is all of the code used in the above steps
In addition to instructions on how to create the robot, I also created lecture and worksheet materials that work with the kit materials and teach students about various topics in engineering and robotics. Here are the lessons:
- Before I ran out of time, I’d planned to make a comic book series of pre-reads prior to each lesson. Here is the intro (and only) comic that talks about modularity and layers of abstraction
- Lesson 1 is about 3D printing (worksheet)
- Lesson 2 is about 3D modeling with code using OpenSCAD (worksheet)
- Lesson 3 is about electricity and prototype electronics (worksheet)
- Lesson 4 is about motors and gears (worksheet)
- Lesson 5 is about microprocessors and digital circuits (worksheet)
- The remaining lessons (6-8) are the robot construction ones linked to above
(I have Word and PowerPoint versions of the above if you have a use for them and would like to modify them.)
