Lesson 01 · 60 minutes
Robot or Not?
What makes a machine a robot
Today's goal
Decide whether something is a robot using a test you can defend, then put our mecanum robot through that same test.
Ideas in this lesson
- Sense → Think → Do: the loop every robot runs
- A remote-control car does, but YOU are doing the thinking
- The same robot can be a robot one minute and a toy the next
- Autonomy is a slider, not a switch
Sense → Think → Do
Driven from the IR remote, the robot is all DO: you sense with your eyes and think with your head. Following a line, it senses the tape, decides how far off it is, and steers. Same wheels, same battery, different answer.
How the session runs
- Open Robot or Not on the big screen. Argue about five things: toaster, thermostat, Roomba, remote-control car, self-driving car. Write down the reason, not just the verdict.
- Look at the Sense / Think / Do columns and the exclusions (piloted, unbuilt, grown). Agree a class test: it senses something, it decides something, it acts on the world, and nobody is steering it.
- Meet the robot. Power it on and connect the Mecanum Workshop app: the status line says Connected, with the firmware version (fw 0.10.20), and the start-up messages scroll through the console. That is the robot saying 'my parts are here'.
- Drive it with the IR remote: hold an arrow to move, let go and it stops. Ask: who is sensing? Who is thinking? Who is doing? (Piloted: not a robot right now.)
- Press 9 on the remote for circle strafe: it circles a point ahead with its nose locked on it. Ask the questions again. Nobody is steering, but does it know where it is in the room? (No: with an IMU it only checks which way it is facing. Mostly a very good wind-up toy.)
- Put it on a line of tape and run line following (Sensors tab, Follow, or * on the remote). Ask the three questions one last time. Something changed.
- Vote: is our robot a robot? The honest answer is 'it depends what it is doing'. Mark it on the autonomy slider for each of the three runs.
Try this
- Find a machine at home that senses but does not think. Bring it to the argument next week.
- Is a thermostat a robot? Defend either answer: both can be right if the reason is good.
- Add our robot to the Robot or Not table three times: remote, circle strafe, line following. Where does each land?
When it goes wrong
| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
| The robot ignores the remote | Check the receiver's LED flickers when you press a key. No flicker: the remote battery or the receiver's power. Flicker but nothing happens: the signal wire is not on D2. |
| The app shows an orange re-flash notice | The robot runs an older sketch than the app needs. Flash mecanum_holonomic/mecanum_holonomic.ino; the status line then shows fw 0.10.15. |
| Line following stops at once | Expected on day one: the sensors are not set up or calibrated yet. Use it as a question: why did the robot give up? |
Notes for the grown-up
Resist settling the argument. The disagreement is the lesson: you want them to leave with a test they built, because they will use it against you later when the robot does something clever.
Ages: K-5: stick to toaster / remote car / robot vacuum and act out Sense, Think, Do with three kids holding cards. 6-12: use the full Robot or Not table, including the hair-splitting notes, and have them argue the borderline rows.
Materials: Robot (charged), IR remote, a 1 m strip of black electrical tape on a light floor, projector or big screen for the Robot or Not page, paper for verdicts.