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Designing a Robotics Mat
Designing a Robotics Mat
Robotics mats are often used during robotics competitions to give students an opportunity to showcase their robotics and coding skills. For this project, I was asked to create my own robotics mat that could be used in a competition using the LEGO® Spike Prime robot. The mat had to follow a theme and along with it, I was asked to create various tasks for the robot to complete using movement, sensors, and grippers. I chose to make my mat restaurant themed. I started by creating a prototype for what the mat might look like using Google Drawings. To the right is a picture of that prototype. On the mat, you can see that there are four different tables, a kitchen, and a hostess table as well as an entrance and an exit. The blue lines on the mat represent that path on which the robot will be asked to travel. The colored circles in the kitchen represent the different plates of food that will be explained in one of the tasks.
Task Cards
Task Cards
After creating the prototype for the mat design, I began to brainstorm the tasks. While thinking about the tasks, I had to keep in mind that one of them had to include movement, one of them had to use the distance sensor, one of them had to use the color sensor, and one of them had to use grippers. I came up with three different tasks to go along with this mat that use a combination of all those things.
To the left are the three different task cards to go along with the mat. Included on each task card is the challenge, the time the students will have to complete the task, and a sample code to help students if they are struggling. The first task is the simplest task and involves movement and the distance sensor. The robot is asked to travel from one end of the restaurant to the other without hitting any of the customers. The second involves movement and the color sensor. The robot has to travel around the restaurant and visit each table. By rolling over each table, the robot is taking the customers order and then delivering it to the kitchen. The third task involves the distance sensor, the color sensor, the grippers and movement. It is the most challenging of the three tasks. The robot has to use the grippers to pick up an order from the kitchen and then deliver it to the corresponding table. The sample codes that go along with each task card do not give away the answers to the tasks, but will help students get moving in the right direction if they are stumped.
Assessment Rubric
Assessment Rubric
In order to score the robotics competition, there has to be a type of scoring analysis that the "judges" or teachers can base their results off of. I created a rubric to go along with this mat that teachers can use to gauge their students level of understanding when it comes to robotics and coding. The rubric follows two different areas. One of them is an alignment with an NGSS standard, and the other judges the students ability to complete the tasks. Below is the assessment rubric:
The Final Product
The Final Product
Below are some photos of what the mat ended up looking like. It ended up looking slightly different than the prototype did due to the size of the board I was using. The Spike Prime robot is 12 cm wide, so I decided to make the paths 14 cm in width which limited the amount of space I had on the board. The "plates of food" from task #3 are made out of cardboard tubes with colored paper wrapped around them. They are designed to be easy for the robot to pick up using the grabbers. The people on the mat are used for task #1 and are made out of paper, toothpicks, and a water bottle lid.
Sample Task
Sample Task
Below is an example of the robot completing task #2 of the task cards in which the robot had to visit each table and take orders then deliver them to the kitchen. Next to it is a picture of the code used to complete this task.
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