10th Grade – Principles of Engineering

Students work on designing, building, and programming their mini Rose Parade floats. Students use a VEX microcontroller to connect motors, sensors, and LEDs, then program their floats using a C based programming language called RobotC. This float has a minecraft character whose arms and head were programmed to move autonomously. The float was programmed to complete a designated parade route, which included several turns.

Students designed, built, programmed, and tested this autonomous Mars Rover for the science fair. They were inspired by a field trip to JPL/NASA where they witnessed work being done on the most recent Mars Rover Perseverance, scheduled to land in February 2021. The students' rover performed 3 tasks to search for water/ice. Their rover collected soil samples using a robotic arm, scraped the planet's surface for ice sheets, and used a boring tool to go deep within the surface. The students dedicated many hours outside of class to troubleshoot and redesign their rover.

Students who finished their mini Rose Parade float early spent extra time learning how to connect and program their float to a remote control device. Students were able to see the benefits of having their float connected to a remote control device as opposed to their floats working autonomously. Programming an autonomous robot requires precision and patience, especially when there are multiple tasks involved.