LEGO® Spike Prime Classroom Activities

Spykee Basics

The second chapter in the book introduces students to the most common functions of the robot and teaches them how to code their robot to do basic tasks such as moving forwards and backwards and turning. Students will get to practice using the "move" blocks to code their robot. The move blocks allow students to select the direction in which they want their robot to move as well as the distance in which they want it to travel. Distance can be measured in centimeters, inches, degrees (refers to the degrees of the wheels turned, not the actual robot), seconds, or rotations (meaning the number of times the wheels travel in a complete circle). The accompanying worksheet asks students to have their robot travel forward for two rotations and measure the distance. That task is shown below:

Next in this chapter, students learn how to code their robot to turn using the move blocks. That task is shown below:

The third and final task in this chapter asked students to figure out how to code their robot to move in a figure-8 shape. The book encourages students to draw out the robots path before trying to figure out the code. The book offers a variety of figure-8 paths that the robot can follow. Below is an example of some of the path's as well as the robot performing the task:

How Far?

The fifth chapter in the book allows students to test the robot for distance characteristics. The teacher will assign the groups of students a certain power level and from there, students will need to measure how far the robot travels for different time values and then use graphing paper to plot their data. We measured the number of centimeters traveled for each half of a second at a power level of 50. From there, we were able to plot the data and conclude that it would take 1.4 seconds for the robot to travel 30 centimeters (12 in) and it would take 6.6 seconds for the robot to travel 1.5 meters (59 inches). This activity allows students to practice different math standards such as graphing and predicting. The next step of this task is to see how the surface on which the robot is moving on will affect its efficiency when traveling. Our first set of data was taken while the robot was moving on a carpeted surface. Our next set of data was collected while the robot was moving on a wooden table. From there, we can see that the robot moved slightly farther for each half of a second on the wooden surface, showing us that it is a more efficient surface. Although the difference was subtle, it can make a big difference if the robot where to be traveling long distances. This activity allows students to explore science standards as well such as forces and motion and friction. Below are the two graphs compared side by side:

How many sides?

In the sixth chapter of the book, students practice maneuvering their robot in various geometric shapes. Students first have to attach a drawing device to their robot using tape or rubber bands. This activity helps students learn about basic geometric shapes and internal/external angles of polygons. A common misconception that occurs when going through this lesson is coding the robots turns using degrees and matching it with the degrees of the angle of the shape. For example, a student might think that in order for the robot to make a square, it would need to turn 90 degrees 3 times. While this is true, the degrees in the movement blocks refers to the amount of degrees the wheels on the robot are turning. So if you set the move block to 360 degrees, then the wheel is going to turn in one complete rotation. A trial and error process is used to figure out what numbers need to be implemented into the move blocks in order to make it move at the correct angles. The use of the "repeat" block is also incorporated in this chapter. Once the correct code is found to make the robot move at a 90 degree angle, then the repeat block can be put around it to tell the robot to repeat this turn 3 times, creating a complete square. After completing the square, we were asked to code the robot to move in the shape of an octagon, hexagon, and triangle. The most challenging part of this task was trying to find patterns between the shapes and the angles. This activity covers math and geometry concepts and can be extended to find different shapes and sizes of shapes. Below is a sample video of what this activity looks like:

That Bot has Personality!

Chapter 7 of the book introduces students to the use of light and sound blocks to give the robot some "personality." During this activity, we began to explore with the sound blocks figuring out how to make the robot play sounds with higher notes and lower notes. There are also pre-recorded sounds that you can make the robot play such as a "cat meow." The robot also has a display on top that consists of 25 LED lights that are arranged on a 5x5 grid. The light blocks can be used to turn these lights on and off, change colors, and change brightness. We played around with the light and sound display making the robot "say" and show different things such as shapes and letters. Our final task was to get the robot to simulate the animation of a beating heart. Below is a picture of what the code looks like to complete this task as well as a sample video:

Help, I'm Stuck!

The eighth chapter begins to introduce students to the distance sensor. Prior to completing this activity, students will need to construct the sensor tower and connect it to their robot. The sensor tower includes the distance sensor, the color sensor and the touch sensor. The distance sensor employs the use of ultrasonic range finding to determine the distance to an object. Ultrasonic sensors or SONAR sensors emit very high frequency sound-waves from one of the two openings in the sensor. This sound-wave travels through the air and bounces off objects with an echo and returns to the other opening. By measuring how long is has taken for the sound to travel out to the object and return, the sensor can determine how far away the object is. The first step of this chapter is to figure out how to detect an object and stop the robot, which means we do not want to tell the robot to move a set distance. We used the pink move blocks to have the robot begin moving forward, then used the orange "wait until" block combined with the distance sensor control to have the robot stop when it is within 15 centimeters of an obstacle. This will result in the robot driving forward and continue driving forward until an object is detected less than 15 centimeters away and then stop moving. The next step is to code the robot to navigate around the obstacle whether that is by turning around or maneuvering around it. Below is an example video of what it would look like if the robot turned around after detecting an obstacle:

Next, we practiced giving the robot various obstacles to maneuver around. In the following video, you will see the robot encounter various obstacles and maneuver around them before going back on to the same track it was previously on.

Other Activities Completed:

Outside the use of the book, we were given opportunities to explore different features that the robot has to offer. We played around with the color sensor that is attached to the sensor tower on the robot. The color sensor reads which colors are on the surface and you can make the robot perform different tasks when that color is read. We build a maze using various colored tape to have the robot complete. Below is a video:

We also practiced using Robotics Mats that have been used in local robotics competitions. The mats have various tasks aligned with them and we were able to practice coding the robot to complete these tasks. Some of these tasks involve using a gripper attachment which was build and attached to the robot. Below is an example video of a task that was assigned to the robot to bring a can of food back to its home base:

Next is an example of a robotics mat that had a task requiring the robot to use the grippers to pick up fish and put them back in the lake that is on the mat: