Automation in Miniature
Automation in Miniature
Teaching module from Germany
Teaching module from Germany
Embedded Files
The turntable as a conveyor belt for automation in miniature
The teaching module "Automation in Miniature" enables students to program a small production plant themselves and set it in motion. A traffic light module as status indicator, a light barrier and a turntable serve as hands-on elements, which together with various moving functional parts become a mini production plant. The teams program their plant using the Arduino microcontroller and a text-based programming language. The students can control the turntable as a filling system - in which the light barrier detects a container on the turntable, the status display indicates a change of state by changing from red to green and a dispenser is used to fill something into the corresponding container.
Three LEDs as status indicator for the actors
Structure of lessons
Structure of lessons
The six teaching units build on each other, but allow for a division into a beginner and an advanced program. At the beginning, some motivating insights into the industrial application of turntables put the school class in a fictional factory. For their mini-manufacturing plant, teams can choose what they "produce" with their own fictional scenario. As an introduction to programming with the Arduino, the students first switch the LEDs of the status display on and off. They work with both a real and a virtual traffic light module for this purpose. An Internet-based simulation environment facilitates collaboration and the exchange of the programming created, so that close cooperation remains possible even in distance learning. The teams set the turntable in motion with a geared motor. Other functional elements of the system are moved back and forth between two positions by servomotors. Students first program the servomotor for the dispenser: they turn two gears to open a passage and drop something into a container. After that, teams can program other elements (passage for feeding parts, swivel arm for the ejector).
An interactive instruction page allows teams to work largely independently
Programming
Programming
The difficulty level can also be set at the programming level: If a teacher wants to use the module for an entry level, students enter only a few programming commands in a largely predefined programming. If a teacher wants to use the module for advanced programming, students have additional tasks, such as defining classes. An interactive instruction page allows teams to work largely independently, according to their own needs and at their own pace. In vocational schools for computer science, object-oriented programming is an important teaching topic. The designed module offers the chance to understand abstract principles of this programming style by means of real objects. The teams program servomotors for three real objects (passage for the dispenser, passage for the feeder, swivel arm for the ejector). In this way, the students can learn that different real objects of the same type are, in programming terms, different objects of the same class - an important insight in object-oriented programming.
Social context
Social context
The topic of automation and its societal consequences affect many vocational students directly - as computer scientists, they will possibly program such systems, as automation technicians they might build them and in other branches - such as food technology - they will work with such production systems. In a final lesson, students are encouraged to discuss and reflect on societal issues related to automation in order to consider their own future careers in a broader context.
The turntable transports information here in the form of brightness values
Other applications
Other applications
The module aims primarily at vocational schools, but can also be used in other types of schools. The presented scenario of the mini production line is only one example of many possibilities for the uses of the turntable and the material kit. If you place a (self-designed) black and white pattern on the turntable, the light sensor can convert this brightness information into tones and simple rhythms for a sound output device - thus creating a simple sound machine. There are few limits to creativity...
a cup slides onto the turntable
the light barrier detects the cup
one ball is dispensed
the filled cup is pushed out from the turntable
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